Problématiques du signe et du texte

Abstract

On Signs and Texts. Traditional Cognitive Science, which relies on a symbolic paradigm, has developed its own generic approach to semiotics. In this paper, we re-assess this conception in the perspective of challenging it within a new, specific framework. We start by revisiting Cognitive Science from a semiotic perspective, trying to characterize some misconceptions of semiotics which span throughout recent cognitive research. In a further step, we introduce the concept of interpretation (borrowed from hermeneutics rather than from formal logic), which we demonstrate to be essential for the proper understanding of semiotic objects. In our exploration of the specie standpoint of semiotics as a self-contained discipline, we will advocate a rhetoric and hermeneutic study of texts as opposed to the symbolic analysis of propositions by means of logic and grammar. Finally, we outline a new approach to language, different from those which implicitly underly both traditional semiotics and cognitive science.