Simbolicità e scrittura. C. S. Peirce e F. de Saussure, logiche e limiti

In this paper I consider the relationship between writing and other semiological systems in the recent discussion. In the first chapter I explain something about Peirce’s consideration of existential graphs related to diagrammatic thought. His approach permits to convey the overlap of a semiotic approach to pragmaticism in which the link between symbols and writing becomes clear. According to Peirce, the irreversible process of semiosi, in the terms of a passage from a logic interpretant to another one, is a habit related to another sign that realizes the acts of communication. Further, the hypothesis of a construction of the signification is one of the most important for an approach to pragmatism as well as it’s maintained by modern philosophers. The sense of communicative verbal symbols is, at first, a way to explore the human communication, because of the sketch of linguistic games in which the diagrams meet the reconstruction of scientific thought is the question connected to writing in his alliance with the linguistic systems of signs.
In the second chapter I consider Saussure’s semiological approach to writing. In his three courses of lectures on General linguistics, Saussure explains the isomorphism between writing system and langue through two proprieties: the analogical likeness and the homological correspondence. However, there are more levels in semiological dimensions, and the signs of writing maintain the semiotic autonomy in their significant forms. According to Luis J. Prieto there is a non-realized symmetry between graphical signs and phonetic signs in two or more complementary languages. In a deep analysis of linguistic forms there is an incomplete parallelism between writing and languages systems. In Saussure’s thought the anagrams are a land of investigation to explain the literary evidence of the linguistic structures, in which rules and norms are connected with the symbolic forms of writing. Effectively, if we take advantage of his research in the Germanic Legends, we’ll see the insurance of the alliance between symbols and linguistic signs, in which poetry is not a closed recipient, because it’s linked to the speakers.
In the third chapter there is a reconsideration of what the two authors suggested. The signs of writing are semiological forms that permit to formulate some hypotheses of any systematical existence of writing that in verbal communication are as transformations of parallel systemic characters that can be jointed. In that sense every system of symbols is related to linguistic and pre-linguistic symbolic form. Verbal and non verbal communication, in fact, maintain a link in pragmatic inquiry through existential graphs and their application in Peirce's literature. Continuity, unity and identity are three terms strictly connected to the semiological forms. I try to illustrate some points that Peirce and Saussure have in common in the formulations of their thesis to build an image of the similar matters they have and the resolution of their speculation about writing considered through the positions of contemporary authors.
In the fourth chapter I connect Saussure and Peirce to contemporary debate. I explain in what sense writing is a witness of language in the general linguistic model, as a form of complex scheme of the relationship between signs that maintain the verbal thought. The signs of writing are not mere manifestations of what is expressed by linguistic systems. The iteration of symbolic forms is a first materialization of the tendency of the significance in writing to realize the point of conjunction with the other semiological systems in which more levels are connected. Tullio De Mauro’s reflection on langue as a historical document (referred to Saussure’s thought) permits to bring out the possibility of a reconsideration between the scientific recognition of Saussure’s research and the signs of writing in the linguistic system, from literature to writing languages.
In conclusion, the vastitude of formulations that look for writing as an artificial instrument of the langue needs the intervention of a consolidation of the different forms of writing and the necessity of a limit not only in structural systems, but also in the incongruities as well as the singularity of sign, through the dimensions that realize the signification. It is necessary to exclude the history of symbols incorporated in linguistic context to take the specific significance of writing. The writing forms are not only the graphic signals as pure image or impression, because of the complex characters of writing representations that are not any syntheses of linguistic tradition, or positions in social groups in which the signs of writing take place; further, to discuss about writing languages as well as a mere instrument of thought is redundant.