Semiotics of social structures

Abstract

The prolonged debate about how to do semiotics in face of the discipline’s own historiography and in regards to other social sciences is fragmented on two fronts: the first one is the reorganization of semiotics as a profession and analytical method; the second intends to develop, based on the already established theory, new resources for the research and understanding of meaning(s) construction processes. Therefore, the proposal for this article is based on this bifurcation, with the understanding that there is room, in the current semiotic literature, for an approach of the general conditions prior to the enunciative act – whose socio-cultural bases and regulations delimit the strategies that can be reproduced, modified and amplified in society. In mandatory bridge with sociology, this proposal for an organizational model presupposes four key arguments: Fontanille’s (2015) updated reflection on forms of life and meaning stratification by reproduction and stabilization, adopted as a starting point; the concept of semiosphere, according to Lotman (1999); the collective semiotic procedures of diffusion – the bridges between social groups –, based on Granovetter (1973); and of capital relations, according to Bourdieu (2015), that align the practices, values and regimes of belief in inequality of power and propagation.