ON SIGNS AND SYMBOLS : SEMIOTICS

Ashok R. Kelkar

Tacit symbols:Visual and Verbal

1 Symbols : Visual and Verbal

The concept of a tacit symbol is a combination of the concept of tacit ness with the concept of symbol. Michael Polanyi (1958- 1966) invented the phrase ‘ tacit knowledge’ for a concept that was discovered earlier by Ludwing Wittgents in (1953 ) who asks us to consider how one person may be able to know his way about a town without being able to draw, perhaps even to read, a map of the town while another person may know how to read, perhaps even to draw, a map of the town without being able to find his way about the town. The former obviously has a tacit knowledge of the way about the town. A person who combines both the capacities—finding his way and mastery of the map- may in some way be said to have an explicit knowledge of the way about the town.

Before we proceed to introduce tacit symbolism, a clarification is needed. When we talk about symbols we are liable to proceed as if there is a special class of objects to be called symbols—there are chairs, ladders, and there are symbols. Indeed practically anything can be a symbol, even a ladder can be a symbol—sopāana in India can stand for the progress of a student or even the progress of a spiritual seeker or stand for anything that aids such a progress. (That of course was an explicit symbol.) Actually we should rather speak of symbol process (or symbolism) Symbol process can then be examined in events of a certain sort, namely symboliziing. Symbolizing events may be either visual or verbal or neither. If looking at the ladder or (as in the game of snakes and ladders) at the picture of a ladder reminds us of spiritual progress, this is visual symbolizing. (The game is actually called in India I moksapata ‘ the cloth of spiritual freedom’) If understanding the word sopana in the course of a sentence reminds us of spiritual progress, this is verbal symbolizing (perhaps accompanied by a mental visualizing of the ladder). Before we examine the symbolizing progress let us look at some examples of tacit symbols.

When we see the rays of the sun filtering through the tops of trees in Akiro kurosawa’s film rashomon , we may be thrilled at the beauty of the sight but we may also be strangely affected by it, not quite realizing that the sight has made us know more closely the ecstacy of sex which figures in the story of Rashomon. This is tacit visual symbolism. When we come across a similar sight in a similar context in Kurosoawa’s The Seven Samurai, the symbolizing is more likely to occur in the viewer this time. One can begin to see how a piece of tacit visual symbolism may begin to be routinized, and hence possibly to become customary. Routinized tacit symbolism is likely to be effective on more occasions or effective with more people than a one-shot tacit symbolizing.

A piece of symbolism may combine visual elements with a verbal channel: we have already seen how a word like sopāna may evoke the picture of a ladder before evoking steps in the spiritual progress. Such visual –verbal symbolism can also remain tacit. Here are the opening lines of an ancient Tamil poem (1^sT –3^rd centuries A,.D.) in A. K. Ramanujan’s English translation (1967: pages 22, 110).

What the concubine Said

You know he comes from

where the fresh-water shark in the ponds

catch with their mouths

the mangoes as they fall, ripe

from the trees on the edge of the field.

Even a reader who is unaware of the conventions of

Classical Tamil poetics about landscapes will be made

strangely uneasy by the vivid picture of the shark feasting

on the mangoes—what is the visual doing here, we ask

ourselves, when the Concubine is recalling him, presumably

her lover who has discarded her, to her companion? And

Surely the convention of associating the netyal landscape of

water, nightfall, Shark, the laburnum tree and so forth with anxiety in love, separation, and such other experiences must have been traceable to fresh, innovative

efforts of earlier poets. Again , the convention didn’t specify this particular image in this particular setting—

that is the poet’s innovation.

Tacit verbal symbolism need not always have this visual element. To take a wholly routinized example this time, consider the following American

He was trying to sell me the idea, but I

Wouldn’t buy it. He then tried it on

Others, but there were no takers

The evocation of a market is there for any one to see. To a non-American, the associating of a market with communication of ideas may be striking. The speaker of American English may use these expressions without a second thought. The whole verbal symbolism remains tacit to him, but remains operative nevertheless in the way American speakers deal with ideas and their dissemination. One has only to compare the symbolism with the evocation of the ashrama in Indian expressions like the following.

antevāsin (‘ one living close by, disciple’)

upanis(ad (‘ siting close by, exposition of arcane ideas’)

caran(oⁿ meⁿ baithkar (‘sitting at the feet (of),

Learning. (from)’

Finally, tacit symbolism may be neither visual nor verbal. The formula 2+3=5 stands for +2+3=5 in mathematics where the positive character of the last quantities remains tacit. When Winston Churchill insisted that the House of Commons be rebuilt after the Second World War with its seating arrangement unchanged, he was showing awareness of the tacit association of the seating arrangement with the adversaial party politics of British democracy. When the mother holds the baby to her breast or pats the baby in order to sooteh it or to put it to sleep, she is, tacitly

II. Tacit symbols

In inquiring into the world of symbols some have focussed on very explicit, refined, tidy, systematically functioning, other-coded symbolisms: the appositeness of any such symbol is largely determined in the context of other symbols; they are amenable to logical, mathematical, systematic investigation, their investigators are typically logicians, mathematicans, philosophers of science (typically of the Vienna school).

Others again have focussed on natural languages in their natural setting of ordinary, everyday use, on the discourse of natural sciences in their empirical phase, of human sciences, and of human affairs in their public setting; the appositeness of any such symbol is largely determined in relation to the signate; they are amenable to behavioral, objective, empirical studies; their investigators are typically linguistic, anthropologists, sociologists, experimental psychologists.

Finally some have focussed on progressively more tacit, globally functioning, hopelessly subjective, elusive, self-coded symbolisms functioning in loose-knit assemblies; the appositeness of any such symbol is largely determined in relation to the life of the communicators and addresses; they are amenable to aesthetically and ethically sensitive observant participation in such symbolic transactions; their investigators are typically critics of literature, art mass media, culture and students of myths and other narratives, ritual and other rites, magic, and folklore.

If only these three groups of investigators interact, compare notes and learn from each other If only we learn to speak about tacit symbols in an explicit, logically coherent, systematic, down–to–earth manner for that will not only be a step beyond the structuralism thinking to which Claude Lévi-Strauss was initiated by the Prague School linguist Roman Jakobson, but also a step in the direction of a more integrated approach to all the three modalities of symbolization just described. (Actually, each group of students has elucidated the term ‘ symbol’ exclusively in terms of its own concerns). In the rest of this section we shall sketch a programme for partial demystification of tacit symbolizing and of symbolizing of the third modality.

Tacitness in a sign process involves covertness, the state of being out of awareness. More specifically—

(i) The sign-ant may be covert, as when one says, something about him told me instantly that he was not at ease, but I can’t my finger on what about him;

(ii) The sign-ant may be covert, as when one says, The pallor of his face told me instantly that something was the matter with him, but I can’t put my finger on what the matter was;

(iii) The sign-nation may be covert, as when one says, My presence reassured him but I bet he didn’t get the connection.

(iv) The whole sign event may be covert, as when one says Nature like a good teacher teaches us a lot without seeming to teach us anything at all.

What is tacit may sometimes By readily-recoverable – in which case. tacit-ness may simply amount to implicitness, as when one says, He beat his wife and vice versa (that is, and his wife beat him) or again, He beat his wife and she him (that is, and she beat him) or as when the plus sign can be restored in 2+3=5 (that is, +2+3=+5).

But the more interesting and more important kinds of tacit-ness go well beyond mere implicitness, witness each of the examples given just now under (i) to(iv). With these the recoverability is far from complete if by recovery we mean the possibility for working one’s was to a reasonably uniform paraphrase in ordinary language that presents the signate faithfully, without any loss in message.

At the deepest level of tacitness even this paraphrasability has to be denied. Everyone knows that poetry cannot be translated into another language without loss. But everyone recalls the school exercise of giving a prose paraphrase of the poem under study. This school exercise may be carried out at a very sophisticated level indeed. Ramanujan has not only dared to translate Classical Tamil into the contemporary English idiom. On one occasion he has also dared to offer a prose commentary (1985:pages 231-2). We shall look at both the complete poem and a part of the commentary.

What She Said

to her girl friend, when she returned

from the hills

Bless you, Friend. Listen.

Sweeter than milk

mixed with honey from our gardens

is the leftover water in his land,

low in the waterholes

covered with leaves

and muddied by animals.

Now the commentary.

The speaker in the poem begins with a greeting to her girl friend, talks about the familiar and safe childhood drink milk and garden honey, and moves delightedly to her lover’s wilder, dirtier, animal-ridden waterholes. It is a poem about her first sexual experience, her growing up, her discovery that leaf-covered waterholes are more fascinating than domestic milk and hone. She is leaving behind order, cultivation, culture, milk and honey, to drink of the waters of nature, sharing it with the animals who muddy it... the greeting word annay... means ‘mother”, or any kinswoman, here her girl friend.... The poem moves from the maternal bosom into the sexual world of her man. The two places, her garden and his land, describe two states, and also two kinds people... From another angle, the speaker herself is the waterhole and he is the happy animal ,and she is delighted ... No names of persons or places appear... In the moment of experience, there is no society. The lovers are a solitude in the hills.

Even the simple absence of proper names conveys a message. And yet the commentator has stop in happy exhaustion, admitting defeat from a simple poem described as belonging to the genre of akam poems in Classical Tamil poetics where akam means “ interior, heart, house-hold”. What is true of a simple poem is even more true of a mythology, as Plato’s Socrates pointed out in commenting on his contemporaries’ attempts to offer rather pat, secular explications of the sacred narratives of Greek society. At the deepest level f tacitness where even the possibility of a paraphrase has to be denied (asvašabdvācytā of poetry according to theclassical Sanskrit poetics), it will only be a slight exaggeration to say that the symbol does not merely connect us to the signate but that the symbol brings the very signate into existence. At this level, any symbol is truly, poema, a making –even if that symbol is a single word like annay or akam. Even ordinary vocabulary and syntax, ordinary visuals ordinary postures and gestures, ordinary arrangements have this deep, tacit layer. Faded metaphors of marketed ideas do not quite fade out of existence.

We shall now present a rapid survey of some of these tacit meanings of certain highly abstract signants that enter into the more complex signants of which we have greater awareness. (The colon in the formulations to follow reads as ‘stands for!

Spatial features (including topological features):

point: location entity in a system, point of time, source of divergence, endpoint of convergence

Line: boundary, path, connection

straight line: span of time, direct path, tesor or vector quantity, distance between locations

closed curve: hole, enclosure, division into inside and outside

circular (closed) curve: absence of hierarchy (round table, round robin, etc.) or confrontation or bounded-ness or imperfection.

circle with centre: periphery, centre radial paths joining the two.

spiral (open) curve: incremental recurring, vortex of energy

area: coverage, extent, population

horizontal plane: high/low level

volume: coverage, extent, quantum

horizontal: static stable equilibrium, state of rest

vertical: dynamic stable equilibrium, uprightness, axis of status

oblique: indirect path, dynamic unstable equilibrium

lower / higher: less/ more important, essential/ expendable

left / right: bad/good, change / no change

symmetry/ symmetry

with marginal asymmetry: rigid order/ fluid order, forbidding perfection/ inviting perfection (human anatomy recommends these as against asymmetry)

Proximate/ distant: related / unrelated, closely related / distantly related

Temporal features:

before/after: cause/ effect, more/ less important

before everything/ after everything :initiating /derivative,

first and foremost / last and least, rudimentary/ advanced,

tentative/ once-for-all

with short/ long interval: related/ unrelated

Number (including ordinarily):

one: uniqueness, sameness, harmony, wholeness

two: not-only-ness, otherness, opposition, dichotomy

three: maximum-medium-minimum trichotomy

many: variety

First; best, most important

Second: second best

odd / even: with residue/ without residue

Spatiotemporal features:

Still / moving: dead/ alive, no change/ change,

moving forward / backward, moving upward / downward

better (off)/ worse (off) (human neurophysiology recommends forward locomotion and shirks falling down due to loss of support)

entry/ exit: access to advantage/ loss of advantage,

subjection to disadvantage/ release from disadvantage

Distribution over space/ time:

scatter/ cluster: dissipation/ concentration, plenty of room / crowding (human neurology recommends moderate scatter even distribution of likes / uneven distribution of likes: homogenety / hetereogenety

mode of distribution along a single dimension:

mode of change (abrupt, gradual, null change as the case may be

recurrence at even intervals: predictability, reassuring perfection (human physiology with its own momentary, daily, monthly, yearly rhythm recommends rhythm)

even distribution of unlikes: ending state (human matabolism recommends balance and moderation)

microcosm: macrocosm

macrocosm: microcosm

one-at-a-time/ all –at once: easy-to-process/ difficult-to process, slow and imperfect processing of information / quick and perfect processing of information

Communication channel:

oral-aural: face-to-face (even if by telephone), tentative

manual-visual: not face-to-face yet not wholly impersonal,

once-for-all

with channel-noise/ without channel –noise : difficult

Colour:

chromatic colours in complementation: enduring balance (human physiology of vision recommends complentary colours) some chromatic colours in recurrence or over a stretch: homogeneity, reassuring recognizability

red: easy recognizability, life-promoting warm-bloodedness,

life-harming bloody violence

red-orange-yellow/ green-blue-purple: warm/cool

Taste:

Sweet: celebration, attractive

bitter: disappointment, repellant

Spatiotemporal redistribution of belongings and of information:

input/ output, intake/ output, put-in/ take-out:

subjected to processing / resulting from processing

Keep over time: conserve for deferred processing, withdraw from ongoing processing

spending/ saving: plenty/ scarcity

giver/ receiver/ the transfer: position of advantage/ position of dependence / conferring of favor, position of disadvantage/position of power/ yielding of tribute

Inward sensations:

heartbeat: security in the womb

orgasm (accompanied by shutting off of other sensations):

mystical or aesthetic ecstacy

vertigo: disorientation.

The foregoing survey is admittedly all too rapid and incomplete. While it should uncover some of the fine texture of complex pieces of tacit symbolism and also the infrastructure of symbolism in human neurology and physiology, there is no room for complacency, no room for quickly jumping to conclusions about what is universal. Let me assure you that no demystification programme is going to be complete which is unfortunate / fortunate (strike out whichever is not to your taste). We now come to the last lap of this programme.

The operation of tacit symbols depends not only on letting the context make explicit what is implicit or letting the context enrich what is bare or letting the neurophysiological infrastructure do its silent work (including dreamwork) but also on indirection in the symbolism itself. The Vedic gods are said to be fond of indirection (parokṣapariyāḥ ivai devāḥ Brāhmaṇa texts, passim, in accounting for the obscurities in the Vedas). Considering that gods are created in man’s image, this is but something to be expected. The artist, the mythmaker, the poet the master of eloquence, down to the humble writer of advertisement copy or designer of consumer product – they are all fond of indirection. And so are their respective addressees.

Indirection in symbolizing turns up in either of two forms:

(i) Displacement and (ii) Enrichment. Although these two mechanisms have so far been discussed in respect of verbal symbolism, it should be borne in mind that they are available in non-verbal symbolism also. Both of these mechanisms of indirection draw upon the routinization and consequent availability of the signation – the readily available tie between the signant, the message –vehicle, the form on the one hand and the signate, the message –content, the sense on the other hand.

Displacement can be presented in either of two ways –as form displacement (figure1) or as sense displacement (figure2) (The arrow indicates the displacement.)

form sense sense

available intended intended

form form sense

selected selected available

Figure-1 Figure -2

Form-displacement is traditionally recognized as the poetic mode by some modern Western critics and vakrokti in Classical Sanskrit poetics (in contrast to the direct mode of manifestation or saralokti). Sense-displacement is traditionally recognized as the tropes of metaphor, metonymy, irony or the like in Classical European rhetoric and lakṣṇaṇā in classical Sanskrit poetics (in contrast to direct mode of interpretation or abhidhā ). Vakrokti and lakṣṇaṇā are but two ways of recognizing the same symbolizing phenomenon of displacement. Obligatory in some cases in the sense there is no direct made available. The phrase win the argument has no non-metaphological paraphrase in English. The celebrated example of this phenomenon is of course the metaphor ranging from the humble leg of the table or electric current to the sublime prayer tamasomā jyotirgamaya (let me go from darkness to light). Non-verbal metaphors may be seen in political cartoons or electric heaters made to look like log fires or painted curtains or the punching bag (or sparring partner) used for the training of a boxer.

In contrast to the mechanism of displacement, the mechanism of enrichment does not reject the available form or the available sense but offers sense enrichment as a sort of bonus over and above what is readily availed (Figure 3).

form sense sense

Available available enriching

and (possibly

intended not wholly Intended)

figure -3

Enriching sense is traditionally recognized as suggestion in Classical European rhetoric or vyańjanā in Classical Sanskrit poetics. Enrichment-bearing form is traditionally recognized as atišayokti (‘laden speech’). Classical Sanskrit poetics contrasts atišayokti with svabhavokti (‘nature-hugging speech’) and contrasts vyańjanā with abhidha (‘ direct interpretation’). Classical Sanskrit poetics also takes notice of the fact that displacement itself may be a point of take- off-for enrichment. So lakṣaṇā engenders vyańjanā and vakrokti engenders atišayokti. Thus a simile or metaphor often suggests something much more than simple resemblance across different categories, or a rhetorical question often betrays a residue of doubt underlying the confident statement that it intends to make. It also takes notice of the fact that the sense enrichment may continue indefinitely like continuing echoes (anuranaṇa).

III What Vulgarity is Tacity Saying to us

To say of some human act or the result of some human act or the author of such acts that these are vulgar is to pass a judgment on it. To begin with a judgment of vulgarity used to be wholly a social judgment: this is just the sort of thing that offends me about what to me are the lower classes in my society. Then it was extended to acts perpetrated by the speaker’s peers or even his superiors as a reproach: this is just the sort of thing that reminds me about the offensive aspects of what to me are the lower casses is my society. from this it took only a step to speak of something as intrinsically vulgar, as typical of lower classes in an ideal society so to say. (cf. Aldous Huwley 1930:2-3). The author of the judgment presupposes a contrast between his own refined aesthetic –ethical sensibility and his subject’s coarse aesthetic-ethical sensibility.

What started as a social judgment ended up being an esthetic-ethical judgment also. The step from one to the other sense of the world vulgar was historically a step from participating in a close-knit community, a Gemeinschaft enjoining the high and the Low alike—To thy station be true, svadharmḥ sreyaḥ (own –way-of-life –better) to participating in a loose-knit public, a Gessellschaft enjoining everybody- To thy self be true, svahavaḥ sreyaḥ (a coined expression, not attested in Sanskrit). In a closed society to be vulgar is to presume above one’s station or to lapse below one’s station In any case not to know one’s place below one’s readily invite an adverse social judgment . —(It is worth noting that in traditional India the word grāmyatā points to lapses below one’s station and not to presuming above one’s station. In an open society to be vulgar is to display feeling just because one thinks that others should think that one has them—in any case not to be sure of oneself in doing what one thinks is the right thing to do and thus to readily invite an adverse aesthetic-ethical judgment. Both the sense of the adjective vulgar survive till today.

What is it about the human act subjected to the judgment that induces the on looker to pass such a judgment, whether wholly social or wholly aesthetic-ethical or a little of both. The act deemed to be vulgar is a sign that calls for or admits of some elucidation. It is a tacit symbol. An elucidation normally remain covert. It is a tacit symbol. An elucidation of this tacit symbol may serve as a useful case of the whole idea of tacit.

The human act is sending some message, as it were, in the direction of the onlooker who is liable to sit in judgment. To being with, there is the message about the performance. Following closely upon this is the message about the subject’s intentions behind the performance. Quite often there is also the message about the subject’s own assessment about the performance in the light of his intentions. Let is be borne in mind that these messages may be mistakes–in that they only represent the onlooker’s assessment of the performance, of the subject’s intentions, and of the subject’s assessment about the performance. The judgment of vulgarity is prompted by certain discrepancies between the messages. Actually the message about the performance gives the first clue that there may be some such discrepancies.

The message about the subject’s performance usually considers it as an expression in skills an expression of feelings or an enactment of sentiments or a formulation of insights, and finds it wanting in that the performance is of the sort that one has learned to expect from persons of a coarse sensibility. More specifically the performance may be overemphatic, over-explicit rather than moderately explicit or tacit, uncalled for (reticence would have been better), something that inverts the natural order of things (as when a recent Indian advertisement assured the buyer that their silk looks exactly like nylon riot of colours in a sunset sky as glorious technicolour, something that falls short of the profundity of the passion or insight through oversimplifying or over-mystifying (examples a are a good deal of instant religion or instant philosophy), or something profound or soulful only to misapply it. (The French have a name for this last shortcoming-they call it a clichč.) (The might also think of it as a semantic malapropism.)

The message about the subject’s intentions behind the performance and the message about the subject’s own assessment about the performance in the light of his intentions need to be considered together. Between them the two help the onlooker to recognize different kinds of vulgarity. There are three of them:

(i) pretentious vulgarity: There is a mismatch between intentions of refinement and coarseness of performance. The subject (0ften a confident social climber) sees no mismatch, at least doesn’t see how others could see through. The onlooker is typically moved to laughter or pitying laughter. (The Germans have a name for this kind kitsch.)

(ii) Brazen Vulgarity: There is a mismatch between intentions to pass off as refined and the absence of any real effort in the performance. The subject (often an upper class or a lower class person of ingrained coarseness) recognizes the mismatch and flaunts it. The onlooker is typically moved to irritation or even anger.

(iii) Nervous vulgarity: There is a mismatch between intentions of refinement and coarseness of performance. The subject (often a diffident social climber) hopes that the mismatch is not perceptibly serious. The onlooker is typically moved to pity or laughing pity. (An interesting case of this kind is someone over displaying certain feelings that he genuinely has in order to make sure that others notice them. Another case is someone who considers himself refined trying to admire what he would have ordinarily considered too low to be noticed. The classic case of nervous vulgarity is of course Charlie, the creation of Charles Chaplin.)

When there is no mismatch between the performance and the intentions (0ften accompanied by a certain insouciance or a certain confidence), the onlooker sees no vulgarity and may even be moved to admiration (how graceful!’ as the how earthy! case may be).

Contemporary India is a rich breeding ground of vulgarity. Indeed it is rich in many cultural ironies that facilitates this process—

(i) the designers of consumer products, popular decoration, and popular entertainment intended for mass marketing think that they are the ones to manipulate and exploit popular taste and turn out to be victims of their own uncertain taste which uneasily hovers between the middlebrow and the lowbrow (for example, between films with a social or patriotics message and grade-B masālā films);

(ii) the ‘folk’ reject folk art in favour of the lowbrow and the middle classes find virtue and wholesome robustness in folk art;

(iii) the middle classes often flaunt their refinement but merely succeed in exhibiting genteel vulgarity;

(iv) the highbrow often embrace the imported middlebrow to emphasize their refinement and end up being tourists in their own country often affecting their ‘ discovery’ of the Indian tradition (Ravishankar! how cute! ) and often treating as refined what is deemed to be coarse in the West (fashionable Indians making a delicacy out of ‘fast food’ and ‘ pulp novels’).

Aristotle defined the ludicrous as that which is ugly without being painful. When one cannot make up one’s mind whether something is ludicrously ugly or painfully ugly, one is dealing with something that is vulgar. The uncertainty is occasioned by the complexity and the tacitness of the messages of the messages that the vulgar act is sending in our direction.

REFERENCES

Huxley, Aldous 1930. Vulgarity in literature. London:

Chatto and Windus.

Polanyi, Michael 1958. Personal knowledge. London; Chicago;

University of Chicago Press.

------ 1966. The Tacit dimension. Garden City NY: Doubleday.

Ramanujam, A, K., ed., tr. 1967. The Interior landscape.

Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

----ed., tr. 1985. Poems of love and war. New York:

Columbia University Press

Wittgenstain, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophisches Untersuchungen.

German text with English translation (Philosophical investigations)

Anscombe, G.E.M.; Rhees, Rush, ed. tr.

Oxford: Blackwell; New York; Macmillan, 2^nd ed., rev.

Oxford: Blackwell., 1958.

COLOPHON:

This is essentially what was orally presented at the Seminar on Indian Symbology at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai, January 1985 except that this version has been considerably refined and elaborated. This was published in Indian Symbology Proceedings of the Seminar..., ed. Kirti Trivedi, IDC, IIT, Mumbai, 1987, p-133-146.