National Identity in Semiotics

Summary of findings

I will briefly summarise my findings here:

France and Italy-based respondents were more prone to orient to national issues in the field of semiotics by remarking the problems they face in the individual academic system they are embedded in.

France-based respondents enacted a collective positioning since eight out of ten respondents had been oriented to three main issues in French semiotics regarding the recognition of the field in the national academic system.

A prevailing dominant discourse of Semiotics (which I called a D-discourse of Semiotics) emerged across respondents. This discourse conveys the respondents’ subjective experience of dwelling a marginal field.

Semioticians do not present a single and stable type of identification. Instead but they select from an inventory of identity affordances that may even be contradictory in different moments of the interaction. Those respondents showing more durable identities are those who have a clear sense of juggling between different fields.

Unexpectedly, a group of respondents openly deconstructed membership from the larger group of semioticians by claiming membership in other fields.

Another group of respondents expressly stated their willingness to counter the dominant D-discourse of semiotics.

National issues in semiotics

In this section I will discuss two findings. Firstly, France and Italy-based respondents were more prone to orient to national issues in the field of semiotics by remarking the problems they face in the individual academic system they are embedded in. Secondly, France-based respondents enacted a collective positioning vis-à-vis the semiotics’ state of affairs in France. The third question in this study sought to determine the extent to which the concerns made relevant in the interviews could shed light on the current status of Semiotics in the respondents’ countries. The answer to this question is relative since the current status of semiotics is context-dependent, changing from one country to another and can provide proper examples in some countries. In my data, several researchers accounted for the general situation of Semiotics in their countries of work, so it was clear that certain tensions were going to rise. Given that semiotics’ organisation degree is contextually contingent, we can claim that there were well-demarcated national Semiotics orientations. In this manner, France-based researchers reported multiple tensions in their national academic system. In fact, respondents enacted a collective positioning when eight out of ten individuals oriented to a main issue in current French semiotics: the recognition of the field vis-à-vis the national academic system. Furthermore, they also stressed two additional issues framed as: 1) A generational gap between Greimas’ students and younger researchers

2) Atendency to frame semiotics theory in the Greimas-oriented strand solely.

All three tensions are inseparable from Greimas’ figure, so I will address them in inverse order, starting by what one of my respondents considered as ‘greimasianism’ (greimassisme in French). This ‘greimasianism’, or the tendency of many France-based scholars to remain in the zone of influence of Greimasian thought, harkens back to the work and figure of A. J. Greimas, who was the main pivotal figure of French semiotics in the twentieth century. Most of French semiotics theory has been dominated by greimasian, or ‘post-greimasian’ research, i.e. problematics in Greimas’ theory that have been developed after his death in 1992 (Broden, 2017). Greimas’ semiotics modelled French semiotics at different levels. For instance, the only French semiotics research centre (located at the University of Limoges) was founded by a former student of Greimas. Moreover, this laboratoire follows a heavily-oriented greimasian model of semiotics and still publishes the outlet Actes Sémiotiques (founded and edited by Greimas and his collaborators in the 1980s). Lastly, a Paris-based seminar intending to recreate the old Greimas’ seminar held at the university is still convened every year. This event either gathers Greimas’ surviving students or an audience that is mainly interested in post-greimasian approaches. ‘Greimasianism’ thus points to the reproduction of a continuous self-referential discourse around this author’s figure.

Now, I will briefly discuss the second issue in French semiotics pointed out by my respondents: the generational gap between Greimas’ students and younger researchers. With regard to this matter, I also need to draw on Greimas’ persona. After his death, French semioticians lost their ‘lodestar’ and remained uninterested about a possible federation of the field and the organisation in the local institutions. In this way, no leadership model emerged, a factor that contributed to the consolidation of this Greimasianism. Furthermore, the current situation is insecure (in terms of having a stable academic position) for young researchers in semiotics either since most prominent French semioticians are already retired or are about to retire and their chairs are being closed. Therefore, there is a gap in the renovation of academics and the transmission of knowledge that could affect the maintaining of semiotics in France in the future. This somehow concurs with Beacco and Moirand’s claim with regard to how personalities do not constitute scientific domains. To them, personalities’ role is purely reduced to a role as “influence” and the members of a certain discursive community are the ones who control the norms of “textual production and its perpetuation” (Beacco & Moirand, 1995: 32). Yet, French semioticians still need to determine the impact of Greimas’ influence in the upcoming state of their field.

Lastly, I will touch upon the main issue that pertains to the institutional organisation of semiotics in France in two academic sections at the National Council of Universities (CNU), as well as how researchers are constrained by these sections. In the literature, this subject has been addressed by Ablali (2007) when explaining how semiotics was compartmentalised in two disciplinary sections at the CNU level (sections 07 language sciences and, 71 information and communication sciences). In fact, Ablali simultaneously frames it as an historical and epistemological problem in which Greimas played a main role. Namely, while Greimas was intending to define semiotics as a comprehensive scientific project beyond disciplinary boundaries (Greimas, 1976), he found another theoretical and methodological niche in communication sciences (Infocom) to anchoring semiotics beyond the realm of the language sciences (discipline he was institutionally attached to).

On the other hand, Jeanneret (2007) suggests that several scholars who had been interested in Semiotics have turned to the section 71 in order to find a theoretical or methodological refuge due to the interdisciplinary character of their research objects –which no longer fits in the disciplinary constraints of the seventh section. Having scholars institutionally attached to both sections in my pool of respondents (plus another researcher who is attached to section 11 (Anglo-Saxon languages and literatures) gave an overview of the situation of semioticians in France. Interestingly, those eight respondents, out of the ten respondents, enacted this institutional separation as a drawback for the French community since they are not able to compete for funding on domestic levels and cannot be evaluated by semiotics experts when competing for grants. Instead, they are evaluated by non-specialised peers who disregard semiotics as a competitive and reliable field. Thus, they are framed as not having an ‘authentic’ position.

All these tensions cast a recognition issue from the institutions that can be framed as unrecognised identity (Ricoeur, 2004) so far as practitioners are not able to be acknowledged by the institutions of their own domestic academic system. Interestingly, the ways to cope with these issues was enacted as a particular identity affordance: countering the D-discourse (as in the case of I12), disengagement from semiotics (I13) or adopting a position as ‘mediator’ (I11). I will turn now to the case of Italy. The institutional organisation of semiotics is slightly better in the Italian case. As discussed earlier (section 3.2), semiotics is an institutionally recognised discipline by the national academic system and unlike France, every communications department in Italy offers a mandatory semiotics course at the BA level (Pozzato, 2009). Something that contributes to the transmission of the field to young students.

Nevertheless, as the analysis of Italian respondent’s stories showed, three out of four Italian respondents were troubled about being under the risk of getting absorbed by philosophy. In this country, both disciplines share the same disciplinary code: M-FIL/05 Philosophy and theory of language. The implications of sharing the same section is that the community of philosophers, larger in dimension and better organised than the semiotics community, would eventually ‘swallow’ the semiotics section and would overcome them in terms of funding opportunities. The existing local tensions in Italian semiotics affect respondents’ performance expectations insofar as this tension renders their academic identity as insecure and uncertain. Something that was suggested by Archer (2008) in her discussion on internal institutional factors that affect the modelling of academic identities.

Finally, the fact that both communities oriented to these problems may find a possible explanation in the size and relationships held by the Italian and French community of semioticians.

Both communities are the most numerous in Europe and share a structuralist common ground in the early theories of Eco and those of Greimas. Furthermore, they have kept historical strong bonds (Dittus, 2017), i.e. Eco’s students visiting Greimas’ seminar, or both scholars lecturing in the other’s country. An outcome of these relationships is visible in the great deal of Italian semioticians working in Francophone environments in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Now that I have showed the situation of semiotics in these two countries, I would like to orient the discussion to whether or not respondents have developed ways of coping with national issues. There are ten France-based scholars in my pool of respondents. They are attached in one of the two sections in which semiotics is present (7 and 71). With the exception of I14 –attached to the 11 section. I have discussed the global positioning of these respondents. However, regarding to individual identity-construction, two respondents chose to disengage from semiotics and to remain in their own field (either in infocom or in language sciences). Three more displayed co-membership feelings, two cast themselves as critical voices. One more wanted to be engaged in semiotics despite being constrained by the boundaries of section 11 and one more chose a position of mediation. Lastly, two more respondents are Emeriti, which implies that their retirement has taken place. Yet, they showed full commitment to the field. In the case of Italy, four out of four respondents from Italy displayed co-membership feelings in the group. Particularly, I3 who countered the Discourse and enacted an alternative narrative and I30 who adopted a critical stance. In relation to the remaining countries, I will briefly discuss each country’s situation and whether or not respondents found a solution to cope with the national issues. Another particular case is Great Britain, where the situation for semiotics is completely marginal. Paradoxically, the structures of the British higher education system, favouring a model of ‘entrepreneurial governance’ (Angermuller, 2013), is less restrictive and allows researchers to shift between fields. Since semiotics is not organised in the national academic system of this country, the few semioticians who positioned as such mentioned that there is no interaction on the domestic level. This means that their own alternative was to seek encounters abroad to interact with other semioticians.

This study confirms the previous observations in other countries regarding the current situation of semiotics. Consistent with my observations and the literature (Kull, 2008; Kull et al., 2011), this research found that Estonia holds the higher degree of organisation in semiotics. In this country, semiotics is a well-established discipline with an established semiotics department, journals, study programmes and two main theoretical orientations: cultural semiotics and biosemiotics. Unlike France, Estonian researchers found their own way after Lotman’s death (who was the main semiotics figure in the Soviet Union) and have made considerable efforts to anchor semiotics as a fully-established discipline in the national academic system. Respondents from Sweden and Denmark did not stress on particular issues in the situation of semiotics vis-à-vis the institutions. Instead, their own strategy to deal with the lack of organisation in the academic system was enacted as oriented to (or remaining in) the main research trends that are thriving in Northern Europe. Mainly, in biosemiotics (in Denmark) and cognitive semiotics (in Sweden). Belgium and Luxembourg-based participants did not make any reference to institutional issues and these results matched with those which had been observed in the literature (Catellani & Versel, 2012) with regard to the regional status of semiotics. Semiotics in this country is anchored in the language sciences and in less degree in the communication sciences. The main research centre is found at the University of Liège. Respondents resorted to the connections they maintain with Francophone and Italian semioticians as a strategy to cope with the field’s lack of establishment in this country. With regard to the US, participants aligned with my previous observations regarding the scattering of semiotics in this country and the lack of research centres after Sebeok’s death in 2001. Nevertheless, five out of six respondents coincided that the main spot for meeting other researchers is the annual meeting of the Semiotic Society of America –this association is currently to look for connections in Canada and Mexico as well. Lastly, in the case of respondents from Mexico, Germany and Bulgaria, there were no attempts to talk about national orientations. Instead, they rather focussed on their personal individual stances, talking about themselves and intending to portray co-membership in the larger group of semioticians (with the exception of I08 who openly showed disengagement from the community).

The dominant D-discourse of semiotics

A pervasive Discourse (with capital ‘D’ following Gee, 1999; 2008) emerged across the data which somehow conveys the respondents’ subjective experience of dwelling a marginal field. The character of this Discourse is ambivalent since it is enacted as a form of self-critique of the semiotics community from an inner viewpoint, on one hand. On the other hand, it articulates other social actors’ voices (academic peers mostly) pertaining the way the field of semiotics is perceived. Negatively orienting to or being complicit in this Discourse is one of the motives whereby respondents developed sameness or difference in the group. In the interviews, several respondents negatively positioned themselves against the field of semiotics through a multiplicity of representations of its features: being positioned as reproducing a self-referential discourse or, having a character as a ‘complicated’ and ‘isolated field’ using a complex metalanguage, i.e. the terminology of standard terms and concepts which are used for defining characteristics of objects in the field of semiotics (semiosis, symbols, iconicity, meaning-carrier and so forth). As has been discussed in the previous chapter (section 4.7.3), twenty-four individual representations of semiotics were identified in my data. This D-discourse is linguistically informed by d-discourses (lower case ‘d’; Gee, 2008) in which different types of resources are mobilised such as the following:

1) Age-related terms;

2) spatial expressions,

3) Complexity-oriented terms,

4) Evaluative indexicals

5) Reported speech.

Furthermore, it incorporates an additional resource shaped as a membership categorisation that also depicts semioticians as lacking positive qualities: ‘esoteric scholars who fail to leave their own borders, using a socially irrelevant thing’.

Age-related terms are representations that pejoratively design the field of semiotics as something that harkens back to the past, presented as ‘old-fashioned’ or ‘non-fashionable’ anymore.

The spatial dimension concerns a series of expressions that depicts semiotics as being outside in regard to other disciplines as ‘peripherical’, ‘isolated’, ‘everywhere and nowhere.’ Furthermore, it also stressed a particular state, as being ‘in isolation’. With regard to complexity-oriented terms, they are either designed to make qualitative evaluations about the entire field, or about one particular aspect: ‘semiotics as too difficult’, ‘too heavy’ or ‘too complicated’; ‘a complex-metalanguage’ or too ‘self-referential’. This D-discourse includes an indexical link that connects the names of scholars such as Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes with the context of their use. For instance, as two respondents (I04 and I29) put it: ‘Barthes and all that’, ‘Umberto Eco and that stuff’. These evaluative indexicals presuppose that in particular contextual conditions semiotics is closely related to the works of either of them, and that the field and the authors are considered as out of fashion. At different moments of the interaction, different respondents, with no elicitation from the interviewer, oriented themselves towards this D-discourse. This fact points to the ‘naturalisation’ of this D-discourse of semiotics as if it was a taken-for-granted norm. As such, these features point out to the existence of a shared belief among the community. Either as a norm, or as a belief, the two of them are characteristics of D-discourses (Gee, 2015) Notwithstanding, this D-discourse is also constructed by others, and this was linguistically represented by dint of other voices’ reported speech – indirect reported speech, mostly. So, through this pragmatic resource, respondents discursively enacted what others think of the field and reconstructed ways in which semiotics is ‘being talked’ by others. As suggested by De Fina (2003), reported speech is useful to understand how collective experiences are constructed since the voice of characters’ is quoted in narrators’ tellings and to make evaluations about them. The last linguistic device that feeds off this D-discourse is what I called a membership categorisation of semioticians as being ‘different’. This categorisation marks a paradigmatic shift in the D-discourse since it focuses on semiotics practitioners and not in in the field. This categorisation emerged when respondents repeatedly evoked some semioticians’ features and represented them in their conversations. It is composed of representations regarding:

1) The performance of actions that seek to reduce agency levels. For example, being at odds with other factions (Peirceans versus Saussureans), or lacking the capacity to establish dialogue with researchers from other fields.

2) The ascription of negative attributes: Semioticians, as a disconnected community of inquiry;

3) Indexical links with respondents’ contexts that point to either of the two previous representations.

So far, the discussion has focused on the linguistic devices that contributed to constitute this Discourse (or the ways whereby it became ‘talked’, i.e. another feature of a D-discourse). However, as De Fina points out, even though D-discourses may present ‘some kind of stable core’ (De Fina, 2009: 44), it is necessary to look at larger macro-contexts in order to determine how this D-discourse operate. The fact that a D-discourse of semiotics is shared is an outcome of its naturalisation among the community members. Besides, it is grounded on larger discourses about higher education that includes three main aspects. Firstly, the institutionalisation of academic disciplines in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Secondly, issues regarding the acceptance of inter- and transdisciplinary research and thirdly, the lack of consensus among early practitioners to organise the institutionalisation of semiotics. All three aspects follow a continuum that starts with the first aspect. The first dimension that I will briefly address now is related to the emergence of organised knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Globally speaking, the current state of semiotics needs to be understood in relation to the emergence of disciplines in modern sense at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. As pointed out in the literature (Foucault, 1966; Becher & Trowler, 2001, Weingart, 2010), this process, which contributed to the disciplinarisation and specialisation of different ‘forms of scientific knowledge’, left semiotics out. Mainly due to the absence of a collectivity of organised researchers who were able to develop valid criteria to get semiotics recognised as a discipline and to integrate it into the university curricula (Rastier, 2001). Disciplines were thus a new mode of organisation and ordering of knowledge that was a direct outcome of the limitations of the classificatory systems of knowledge. In this manner, there was a gradually developing process of academic-disciplinary splitting from which have emerged natural sciences, social sciences, and what we currently know as disciplinarised humanities (Li, 2006). However, at this moment and as Deely argues, modern science became so specialised that academics ‘felt threatened by the entry of semiotics upon the intellectual scene’ (Deely, 2015b: 84). Therefore, its holistic, boundary-crossing character did not contribute to its entrance in the disciplinary market. As knowledge became more and more specialised, communities of scholars looked for additional disciplinary organisational modes of science. Thus, the original disciplines were compartmentalised and did not remain any more to be ‘the crucial frames for orientation for the delineation of subject matters and the formulation of research problems’ (Weingart, 2010: 12). This takes me to the second aspect of this discussion which addresses Interdisciplinarity. Broadly speaking, interdisciplinary research privileges the convergence between disciplines, fields or knowledge bodies, and features: a) the articulation of two disciplines with a simpler research object, as well as: b) its systematicity, i.e. more than two disciplines with a more complex research object (Haidar, 2006; Posner, 2003). Inter- and transdisciplinary research objects emerge due to two main reasons according to Haidar (2006). First, the continuously growing epistemological developments in science obliges a more explicative progress of scientific theories, as well as the complexity of historical, social, cultural and political processes. Second, the continuous ‘flux’ of humanities and natural sciences oblige them to set a constructive dialogue. Weingart (2010) adds a third motive that lies in the promotion by funding agencies in the interest of linking political goals with the development of certain types of inquiries. Consequently, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are responses to simultaneous epistemological and historical constraints.

A matter that needs to be added here pertains semiotics’ heterogeneity of research objects and epistemological shifts (as I have shown in sections 2.2 to 2.2.5). To put it briefly, Semiotics addresses all objects from the viewpoint of their functioning as a meaning-process and as Posner argues, ‘it has a value-free perspective which also determines a domain that is studied in its totality’ (Posner, 2003: 2366). Nevertheless, this conceptualisation of semiotics may be at odds with a more rigid understanding of academic disciplines (and knowledge in general) that divides the world in concrete domains, and that encourages the regulation of academic practices in the humanities and social sciences in order to become rigid. Currently, despite strong political pressure is put to cross disciplinary boundaries – backed by the commercial establishment (Archer, 2008), interdisciplinary research is still regarded as dubious due to a seeming lack of epistemological standards. This finds a response in the prevailing academic model in which excellence needs to be demonstrated. Ironically, as Huutoniemi has pointed out, there is still a need to develop further ways to evaluate the many phenomena of Interdisciplinarity: ‘rigorous criteria for judging interdisciplinary quality are strongly needed’ (Huutoniemi, 2010:311). This means that interdisciplinary research is still being assessed on traditional standards of disciplinarity. Something that endangers fields like semiotics which intend to cross academic boundaries. Now, I will discuss the last macro-context of the D-discourse of semiotics regarding the lack of consensus amongst semioticians to define the institutional organisation of the field. Early practitioners of semiotics in the late 1960s and 1970s were concerned with the endowment of an Epistemological identity to the field (see: Greimas, 1976; Sebeok; 1976; Posner, Robering and Sebeok, 2003; Haidar, 2006). Yet, they disregarded the organisation of the field in the academic systems and did not take into consideration how the lack of organisation would affect the practitioners’ as well as the field’s identities. As discussed earlier (in section 2.1), Sebeok, going beyond Saussure’s attempt to establish ‘the study of life of signs within society’ (Saussure, 1916: 33) and heavily drawing upon both the medieval and Peirce’s conceptualisation of Semiotics as a doctrine – ‘the doctrine of the essential nature and fundamental variable of semiosis’ (CP 5.488), considered Semiotics as a ‘doctrine of signs’ and refused to call it a science or a theory (Sebeok, 1976). By choosing this term, Sebeok intended to establish Semiotics as a comprehensive, ‘global’ approach to (see Deely, 2015 and Cobley et al., 2011) that was way beyond disciplinary constraints. In addition, it was supposed to fulfil the explicative and federative role of what later Posner would define as ‘a metadiscipline of all academic disciplines’ (Posner, 2003: 2366). Similarly, Greimas conceived of semiotics as a scientific project that encompass all manifestations of meaning in the form of a ‘science of meaning’ whose main aim was supposed to provide a link between all the humanities and social sciences so that a scientific revolution could take place in humanities (Greimas, 1976; Greimas and Courtés, 1983). At this point, and even though semiotics internally differentiated itself and became specialised in subdisciplines (as showed in section 2.2), it was poorly organised in the national academic systems. In consequence, it was assigned a different status in each country that was far from the status of an institutionally recognised discipline.

Once that I have shown the larger contexts of this Discourse, I just want to conclude the discussion regarding the implications of this finding with regard to respondents’ identifications. I argue that this group of researchers constructed themselves this D-discourse as a way to convey multiple ways of talking about semiotics from a subjective perspective of inhabiting a marginal field. Those respondents who vindicated this Discourse were the ones who distanced themselves from the field of semiotics, whereas those who reject it cast themselves a more durable sense of engagement in the field.

Different identities for an heterogenous group

In this section I will discuss the findings concerning this group of semioticians’ choice of identities. In this way, I will respond to the second part of question one which intends to account for the representations of the academic practice of semiotics. Interviewees do not possess a single identity. Instead, they constantly present and re-present themselves by selecting from an inventory of identities that either intersects or contradicts according to the moment of the interaction. In addition, a few respondents also showed more dynamic identities. Especially, those who have a clear sense of moving around in different fields, or the senior scholars who have participated in the development of semiotics since the 1970s. The first identity affordance to be discussed is when semioticians chose to construct a sense of being equal in the group.

Being an accepted member of the community

A group of twenty-one respondents conveyed positive perceptions vis-à-vis the community of semioticians. The representation of a sense of being equal among members of the group was constructed when speakers established the commonality between the members of the community. Put it briefly, a set of common things and attributes that contribute to convey co-membership. As Bucholtz and Hall (2005: 599) argue, group members do not need to be identical, but they rather need to feel as being ‘sufficiently similar for interactional purposes’. This can be more operatively articulated through the notion coined by Brubakers & Cooper (2001: 20) called groupness, i.e. the sense of belonging to a distinctive group. However, groupness was only ‘engendered’ when respondents linked two features: commonality and connectedness. The former is related to the sharing of a common language (a semiotics metalanguage to talk about semiotics and their research objects), a set of theoretical discourses about the field and a positive sense of being an accepted academic: having good feedback by other members of the group, or performing certain activities in associations or journals that help to give consistency to the group. The latter includes relational ties that link people, for instance when making relevant a network of fellow researchers to interact with, to share ideas, and to discuss different aspects of research. Linguistically, the sense of being the same within members of the community was constructed by means of two ways that imply the similarity dimension in Bucholtz and Hall’s principle of relationality: 1) through the consistent use of inclusive deictics (‘we’ in English, ‘nous/on’ in French and ‘nosotros’ in Spanish) with stable referents to display a position from the perspective of the community of semioticians. This indicates a higher degree of these speakers’ involvement with the field, as well as their relationship to other members of the community. 2) when respondents construct themselves from a-person-to-world perspective as active agents (Bamberg, De Fina & Schiffrin, 2011). This occurs when respondents draw on the commitment modality (De Brabanter & Dendalle, 2008) in their discourse and assert certain epistemic positions regarding their actions regarding the building, maintenance and legitimisation of the field of semiotics. An additional strategy to enact a sense of being the same in the group was displayed by three respondents when highlighting a concrete subject position that contributed to cast themselves as particular type of persons (a concerned educator (I12), a committed journal editor (I25), and a critical voice (I26)). As I showed in the analysis, these three researchers negotiated their identities by ‘carving out’ a space for resistance, particularly by enacting an alternative narrative (MacLean et al. 2017). Hence refashioning the existing frames about semiotics and emphasising its social salience as well as the usefulness of its research method. By challenging the D-discourse, they claimed a more durable sense of co-membership that goes beyond the interaction (Bamberg, 2010).

In the next section, I will show the second identity affordance that was constructed by some respondents.

Disengaging from the community of semioticians

One unanticipated finding was that a group of four respondents openly expressed disengagement feelings towards the field of Semiotics. These respondents’ identity-negotiation and presentation was nuanced and contradictory. In some narratives, they showed a few glimpses of their identification as semioticians, e.g. ‘I’m the only one [in the research centre] who really does semiotics’ in the case of I29. However, in other moments, respondents preferred to stick to their home field. This inconsistency may be due to the fact that respondents claim dissimilar identification feelings at different moments of the interview. This is in line with Potter and Wetherell’s claim (Wetherell & Potter, 1998) regarding identity as a set of non-fixed representations of the self, as well as featuring a dynamic character that can change according to a particular moment in the interaction (Clifton & Van de Mieroop, 2017). The claims of being different from the members of the group emphasised the difference dimension in the principle of relationality. In this manner, these interviewees fully disengaged from the field of Semiotics by establishing what differentiated from semioticians: participating in certain events over semiotics-related events, adopting eclectic theoretical approaches that challenge the tenets of some semiotics school or framing semiotics as a toolbox/method to draw upon. In discourse, these respondents displayed difference from the community of semioticians by dint of the following resources:

Categorisation

Pronominal choice.

As has been argued by De Fina (2003), categorisation processes are paramount to the formation of identities since they are grounded in people’s individual sense of belonging to communities. For instance, I17 used two disciplinary categories which were designed to convey her own self, as well as a way to highlight difference vis-à-vis colleagues who cast themselves as semioticians: ‘Hittitologist’ and ‘Classicist’. In the other case, rather than using a category for self-description, I13 negatively oriented towards the category ‘semiotician’ and refused to be ‘labelled’ under this category by stressing the negative implications this term has in her country of work. The implications behind I13’s action connects semioticians with the performance of certain activities that are rejected by the interviewee. These respondents expressed their desire to distance themselves from the field of semiotics by means of a consistent use of the third plural personal deictic (‘they’ in English, ‘ils in French’ and ‘ellos’ in Spanish) which builds up a frontier between the enunciator and ‘them’. The use of these deictics can be regarded as linguistic markers of demarcation of the field. On one hand, speakers consciously –or unconsciously, emphasised roles and actions which semioticians perform and which suggest a clash with their norms and beliefs. The use of the deictic ‘they’ can be seen as encoding a contrast between semioticians and non-semioticians, as a delimitation of the field of semiotics. Moreover, pronominal shift is displayed when they veered towards self-referencing (De Fina, 1995), i.e. the constant use of the first person deictic ‘I’ (‘je’ in French or ‘yo’ in Spanish), to index their own lack of participation in the group, as well as the lack of commitment in the community through the performance of intentionally motivated actions such as claiming membership in the field they are institutionally attached to Lastly, these speakers also attributed these values to both pronouns on the basis of the parameters which are imposed by larger discourses, namely the D-discourse of Semiotics. In this way, they displayed a positive orientation with this Discourse as a strategy to construct difference from the community of semioticians.

Mixed identities

The current study found that sometimes respondents tended to express their desire for versatility in their research trajectory by displaying additional identity claims. Respondents featuring more dynamic identities are those who have a clear sense of juggling between different fields. This is related to the fact that multiple identities were made relevant and negotiated in the course of the interaction and expressed in diverse stories. For instance, one particular case arose when a respondent (I02) showed resistance towards being typecast in a singular discipline and rationalised this as going against the norm in academia. In doing so, this respondent also resorted to lexical choices including self-description categories (‘a cultural-biosemiotician’) or a metaphor (‘a switching mechanism’), both designed for self-presentation purposes so far as she decided to convey a particular type of identification. The other example is about a respondent (I33) that made relevant another facet of his identity as politician. In fact, he exhibited a capacity to separate his political self from the academic self, as well as managing to blend both identities for the sake of each other: utilising Semiotics to improve social reality on one hand and utilising politics to not be surpassed by theoretical abstraction, on the other hand. Both cases are examples of a diversification since these individuals were able to construct hybrid identities (Whitchurch, 2009). As we saw in the literature review (section 2.5), a hybrid identity emerges in a third space between the academic and the professional domains. In this way, these respondents were able to cross academic boundaries to shift between fields as well as their theoretical orientations. This finding may also help us to understand the dynamism of positioning in different narratives and moments of the interaction. That is to say, how positioning affords the construction of a non-stable and constantly-changing self.

Representations of the academic practice of semiotics

One interesting finding is that along the three possibilities which identity respondents chose, they also enacted two further representations of individual identity which are closely connected with the perceptions of their academic practice. They are contingent on the audience they interact with in their everyday lives as academics as well as the type of ‘academic roles’ they perform (Barnett & Napoli, 2008) as researchers, teachers or professionals. As presented in the analysis, semioticians meet identity struggles when confronting three particular audiences: a) fellow semioticians, b) peers in both the local and the global level at the same department or university and globally in other fields, universities or countries and c) their students. In addition to previously discussed co-membership feelings displayed vis-à-vis fellow semioticians, a group of respondents recognised being accepted by their students and was explicitly expressed when respondents draw positive relationships with this audience. This contributed to show a side of respondents’ identity as educators. As one interviewee (I09) put it ‘the students approach me and ask for advice, they either ask me to give an introductory course or they attend my seminar’. Conversely, the relationships with other academics can vary. At least five respondents recognised being at odds with their peers. The space in which this often happens is the workplace and was enacted as a struggle in which respondents reported being positioned as an external ‘other’ who is not part of the collectivity and is not aligned with the norms and practices of the group. Simultaneously, academic peers were portrayed as ‘being less receptive’, ‘rigid’ or ‘closed-minded’. Both directions of positioning prompted participants to frame their academic practice in terms of opposition. Opposition enacts marginality feelings either at the workplace or at the home field. In both environments, the difference aspect of the principle of relationality was present. A sense of being marginal was openly expressed by means of two categories: ‘outsider’ (I21) and ‘outcast’ (I04). Such categories were designed to convey a sense of alienation as well as to remark the lack of interlocutors in the workplace: either in the home department, or at one’s own university, and the absence of interaction prompted interviewees to look for research networks abroad. Besides categories, another resource through which this ‘marginal’ identity was constructed lies in indirect reported speech. Through reported speech, respondents represented their particular perspectives on the performance of certain events. On one hand, speakers stressed peers’ personality by endowing them with voice, and conveying evaluations about them as ‘sceptical’ towards semiotics (Carranza, 1998). The analysis of reported speech attributed to academic peers shows that respondents intended to recreate their peers’ alignment towards one of the four dimensions of the D-discourse I will now turn to the conclusion of the thesis.

Conclusions

In this thesis I have discussed the experiences demonstrated by of a group of forty researchers who work in the field of Semiotics. Each respondent’s story was co-constructed with me as an interviewer in the context of a research interview. Throughout our interactions, they performed identity work by alluding to different academic roles, as well as making relevant different facets of their identity (as semioticians, professors, members of one ethnic group or another community) as well as conveying, through narratives, their subjective stance of working in a peripheral field.

Summary of the thesis

Chapters 2 and 3 laid a theoretical and methodological grounding for the investigation, firstly by articulating the research objectives, questions and an overarching discursive approach in this thesis. In Chapters 2- 3, I explored the theoretical framework pertinent to semiotics’ epistemological foundations and the early practitioners’ concern to provide a theoretical identity to the field without underpinning semiotics in higher education institutions. I have argued that this gap in the field’s own structure makes an impact in practitioners’ identification in individual and collective terms. Furthermore, I made the case that this issue should be examined from a discursive perspective as situated in the interactional context afforded by narratives in interaction and in relation to the study participants’ negotiation of multiple facets of identity. In Chapter 3, I provided theoretical framework for doing research interviews and described the type of interviews I used in this thesis. Then, I elaborated on the details of my dataset. In addressing the research question investigated in the analysis, Chapter 4 focused on my analytical approach to narratives and the structural features of the analysed stories. In the analysis, I paid attention to linguistic mechanisms for achieving positioning in the world of narrative and in the world of interaction. I then moved to examine how respondents constructed membership in the group of semioticians, as well as the ways in which they distanced themselves from the group. When addressing how interviewees construct difference from the community, I argued for the existence of a predominant D-discourse in the community of semioticians that embodies different discursive practices about the experience of being a semiotician and working in this field. In Chapter 5 I moved to analyse the cases of three researchers who work in the borders of two fields: communication, media and philosophy. I examined how each of them, based on their personal stories, clearly chose an identification possibility: a disengaged communication scholar, an outcast in the workplace, but a well-received semiotician, and someone who combined a second facet of professional identity with his academic identity as semiotician. Turning to the discussion Chapter 6, I articulated the ways this thesis has responded to further research questions. By drawing on relevant literature on epistemological foundations of semiotics I established a link between the linguistic resources and the higher education macro contexts that feed off the D-discourse and describe how it is imposed. I provided the different identification affordances which the respondents drew on and claimed that those scholars who have more dynamic identities are those who have a clear sense of belonging to two different fields. I then discussed the concerns that were made visible in respondents’ narratives and then oriented to whether or not they have enacted strategies to grapple with these issues in their country of work. Finally, in this Chapter 7, I responded to the second question and discussed how positioning as a theoretical and methodological articulation cuts across the thesis insofar as it enables an explanatory model for negotiation and identification strategies for the semioticians and how they are linguistically represented in discourse, in the context of a an interaction with me as interviewer. I will turn now to the contribution this thesis makes in positioning theory and the field of semiotics.

Contributions of this thesis

This thesis intends to contribute to knowledge in two main areas: 1) Studies of identity in interaction by applying positioning theory as a methodology to approach identity generation in a group. 2) General semiotics by providing a reflexive account of the field of semiotics through narratives and the identification mechanisms of a group of practitioners through the identification mechanisms of a group of practitioners.

Contribution to positioning theory

In this section, besides stating my contribution to positioning theory I will explicitly respond my second research question: To what extent do narratives in interaction mobilise positioning to enable the construction and negotiation of the process of identification of participants and amongst participants? This question cut across the whole analysis chapter (chapter 4). Positioning as a theory, intends to address the ever-changing facets of identification processes and the ways in which they are performed through discourse. Positioning is done interactionally, to others and the self, in a continuous manner (Davies & Harré, 1990; Bamberg, 1997). In this thesis, I showed how respondents made relevant different facets of their identity in narratives and across the interviews as well as how they coalesced around particular subject positions at the local level or, when making relevant larger macro-contexts to present themselves in the ways they want to be perceived. Put in another manner, positioning afforded a way to assess how the participants organised their world locally, against the discursively-ascribed identities that occur in the macro level. In telling stories, participants “artfully pick and choose” from an available set of experiences to craft and construct the narratives as well as selecting things from what is culturally available as Holstein and Gubrium suggest (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000: 103). Participants put considerable work into staging particular versions of themselves, within the context of having previously available identities. Semioticians’ biographical accounts are distinct but sometimes remarkably similar. Semiotics scholars come from diverse backgrounds, so no two stories are the same and as Fraser (1999) points out, each academic believes having a non-typical and unique story. In these stories, several aspects of their biographies are visible: studies, expectations, choices made, encounters and characters. In the world of narrative (level 1), respondents evoked different characters and sketched their characteristics and relationships to one another which turned out to be very significant. The relevance of this level is grounded in the fact that it showed the network of bonds and relationships respondents wove with the antagonist of their stories. The main characters in these stories were the respondents themselves and the audiences they regularly interact with: fellow semioticians, peers in both the local and the global level, and their students. Respondents positioned themselves from past viewpoints as former students –or pupils, while simultaneously positioning figures from the past like supervisors, teachers or inspirational sources. At this level, respondents designed characters’ personalities when describing their features in terms of qualities and through the performance of activities, hence endowing them with agency. At this same level, through the multiple references to characters, associations or outlets, we can see how positioning was afforded amongst the group. Clearly, several respondents know each other since they have worked together, maintain the similar network and in some cases, had the same supervisor. Yet, this positionings were constantly renegotiated across the interviews.

At the interactional level (level 2), respondents carried out local, interactional work. At this level, positioning can be seen as a parallel to the macro ascriptions of identity in the field of Semiotics and this work is accomplished through the course of their interactions with other semioticians when constructing sameness or difference. However, as much as this set of identities has been foregrounded in the data, some of them might also be resisted by other participants who openly disengaged from the field of semiotics. In order to connect the interactional level to macro level discourses I drew on Bamberg’s construct regarding level 3. Thus, positioning level 3 is used to look across the data to pull together momentary acts of positioning as more durable locally-produced identities. Respondents construct identities that reflect the way they want to see the field of semiotics in order to maintain their role within it as they identify as a particular type of person. This could also include how respondents negotiate difficulties in taking up particular positions, with reference to how certain academic struggles are understood and the contraposition between seeking to remain in semiotics or working in other fields. Interviewees navigated between locally-constructed claims and what Gee (1999) called D-discourses. In this thesis a prevailing D-discourse emerged and was shaped as ways and shared conventions in which working in the field of semiotics (as a marginal field) is talked about. This Discourse involved discursive practices that also incorporate higher education issues in the form of institutional constraints affecting their field and their professional identities: 1), the lack of institutionalisation of semiotics as a discipline in the nineteenth century, 2) issues regarding the acceptance of inter- and transdisciplinary research and 3) the lack of consensus among early practitioners to anchor semiotics as a discipline in national academic systems. Lastly, the main linguistic resources through which positioning was mobilised to afford the construction and negotiation of identities were categorisation and pronominal choice. With regard to categorisation, respondents mobilised it (on the three levels of positioning) in order to presenting particular aspects of their selves. At level 1, the attribution of features to characters –or to themselves, was carried out by means of the lexical choice of individual terms to indicate membership. With regard to characters, some of the designed categories were ‘sociologist’, ‘semiotician’ or ‘cryptosemiotician’ (Petrilli & Ponzio, 2011). At level 2, respondents displayed multiple claims of academic identity: epistemic positions ‘interdisciplinary researcher’, specialisation traits ‘Russian philologist/specialist in second half Russian literature’. Other categories included were ethnic categories. Interestingly, they were used as a way to correlate ethnicity with academic identity (as in the case of I06 and I18). The design and display of these categories align with Schegloff’s claim: rather than appearing in isolation, categories are usually evoked in groups around the same semantic field (Schegloff, 2007).

Moreover, respondents constructed a ‘membership categorisation of semioticians as different’ in which they engaged in a range of embodied practices stereotypically associated with negative attributes (such as a depiction of strife and constriction in between each other and through terms and expressions designed to convey features of Semiotics in terms of age, space and complexity: ‘an old field’, ‘peripherical’ or ‘heavy and complicated field’. This categorisation is also part of the D-discourse of semiotics. The mobilisation of positioning amongst participants afforded distancing from the community or claims of membership that also incorporated the similarity/difference of Bucholtz and Hall’s principle of similarity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). Respondents thus are positioned as part of the community of semioticians when consistently using inclusive deictics (‘we’ in English, ‘nous/on’ in French and ‘nosotros’ in Spanish) with stable referents. This use in pronouns indexed a higher degree of these speakers’ involvement with the field, as well as their relationship to other members of the community. Conversely, some respondents distanced themselves from the community through a coherent use of the third person plural deictic (‘they’ in English, ‘ils in French’ and ‘ellos’ in Spanish). The use of this deictic encoded a contrast between semioticians and non-semioticians. Lastly, when resorting to the first person deictic ‘I’ (‘je’ in French or ‘yo’ in Spanish), respondents intended to display subjective perspectives which include lack of participation in the group as well as dearth of commitment, i.e. self-referencing (De Fina, 1995). I will now state my contribution to studies of identity in interaction, which is found in its attempt to apply and combine different perspectives of positioning theory. Bringing together the theoretical and empirical work has permitted me to explore the research enquiry more deeply and to establish a synergy between these strands. Mainly those of Bamberg (1997), Søreide (2006) Deppermann (2015) and Wortham and Reyes (2015). Bamberg’s model of narrative positioning at levels one and two provides the main tenets for addressing and testing situatedness vis-à-vis the relationship between the teller and the audience in narratives. Søreide provides methodological grounding in regard to the identification of consistent subject positioning amongst the respondents. Deppermann’s approach to positioning theory is more focused on both level one and two. Hence, it was more operatively useful when analysing and explaining phenomena which were co-constructed. Moreover, I drew on Wortham and Reyes’ perspective to approach the indexical dimension of positioning through their notion of evaluative indexicals, which are linguistic markers which attest to account for social action in particular contexts. These perspectives have been useful in conducting linguistically informed analysis on participant’s positioning in connection with larger macro-contexts. This adds to approaches in positioning level 3 (De Fina, 2013) which is an emerging area in narrative inquiry with particular reference to research in identities.

Contributions to the field of semiotics

Overall, this study addresses the stories of forty interdisciplinary scholars who work in the boundaries of a not-so-well established field. In Semiotics, to the best of my knowledge, there is yet no existing scholarship which investigates how semioticians do identity work, and that considers practitioners as the main research object to determine their identification issues vis-à-vis the multiple problems that emerged when the recognition of the field is put at stake. The contribution of this research to the general field of Semiotics lies in the fact that it tries to understand how the practitioners of Semiotics negotiate and construct multiple facets of identity (sometimes contradictory) in stories which tell about the struggles they face vis-à-vis the legitimation of the field. Furthermore, it produces insights in the ways in which these individuals experience and produce representations of the field by linguistically enacting them in discourse. Another contribution of this thesis lies in its attempt to combine, from an interdisciplinary stance, different perspectives of narrative approaches to identity, discourse analysis and semiotics by making relevant interactional research and larger macro contexts that affects both the identity of the field and its practitioners. A linguistically informed methodology has been usefully drawn in conducting multi-layered analysis of interviewees positioning in connection with higher education contexts.

Limitations and recommendations for future research

Since this thesis was limited to oral data in interaction with regard to identity construction mechanisms, it was not possible to cover textual data regarding citations. A further study could address and overcome these limitations. I have managed advance the preceding study in a further scholarly manner which has involved bibliometric tools in order to determine the intertextual connections that this pool of respondents has interwoven. In my interviews, I elicited data regarding citation motivations which was filtered out in this research. Combined with bibliometrics, oral data from interviews and textual analysis can further our understanding of how semioticians establish citation networks with other authors. This would imply the identification of positioning acts in the citation-related interview data as well as testing whether they are consistent with textual citation patterns. In addition, the examination of mobilised linguistic resources, as linked to different aspects of identity generation, could provide new insights in the constitution of an academic discourse of Semiotics. To conclude, the scope of this study was limited in terms of the numbers of participants representing individual countries –as in the case of Germany, Luxembourg and Bulgaria (with only one participant per country). Despite the fact that these respondents’ participation was precious for the study, further work is needed in these countries to fully grasp a holistic view of the situation of semiotics there. Future research might be conducted with other scholars working in these countries, as well as carrying out interviews with semioticians from Latin America and China. This is because these regions are currently the world’s main spots where semiotics is more active and produces novel research outputs. These contexts could afford future research avenues to investigate the negotiation and production of identities in other communities of semioticians in order to reveal a global perspective of the field of semiotics from the very stance of its practitioners.