Object and metaobject in semiotics: a unique relation

Abstract

In semiotics and linguistics, the need for an epistemologically-defined and specific object concerning the vast field of various communicative phenomena and for a specific meta-object or metalanguage is strengthened by the structural approach, which also brings with itself a change in the idea of language science leading to a dual science: a “one made up of two”. It is a science that does not consider its categories as autonomous but in relation to “otherness”, namely other categories. In this duality, historicity presents itself as a layered structure of asymmetrical times, as an actualization of semantic potentia: the theoretical object reveals itself as a “chronotope” whereby the space of the theory intertwines with the movement of time. Language uses always the same ancient material for its innovations; it is capable of speaking about itself, of being the object and condition of its meta-object; it speaks of itself by producing an open metalanguage resulting from a process of translation or self-translation, i.e., metareflection. The relationship between object and meta-object is ambivalent and is constitutive of language science: the object (language) contains its theory. Hence their "unique relationship".