On thresholds: signs, symbols and significance
| Date | 10 January 2023 |
| Pages | 1006-1026 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2022-0168 |
| Published date | 10 January 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Betsy Van der Veer Martens |
On thresholds:
signs, symbols and significance
Betsy Van der Veer Martens
School of Library and Information Studies, University of Oklahoma,
Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This paper reviews research developments in semiosis (sign activity) as theorized by Peirce, Eco
and Sebeok, focusing specifically on the current study of “semiotic threshold zones,”which range from the
origins of life through various nonhuman life forms to artificial life forms, including those symbolic thresholds
most familiar to library and information science (LIS) researchers. The intent is to illustrate potential
opportunities for LIS research beyond its present boundaries.
Design/methodology/approach –The paper provides a framework that describes six semiotic threshold
zones (presemiotic, protosemiotic, phytosemiotic, zoosemiotic, symbolic and polysemiotic) and notable work
being done by researchers in each.
Findings –While semiotic researchers are still defining the continuum of semiotic thresholds, this focus on
thresholds can provide a unifying framework for significance as human and nonhuman interpretations of a
wide variety of signs accompanied by a better understanding of their relationships becomes more urgent in a
rapidly changing global environment.
Originality/value –Though a variety of semiotic-related topics have appeared in the LIS literature, semiotic
thresholds and their potential relationships to LIS research have not been previously discussed there. LIS has
traditionally tasked itself with the recording, disseminationand preservation of knowledge, and in a world that
faces unprecedented environmental and global challenges for all species, the importance of these thresholds
may well be considered as part of our professional obligations in potentially documenting and archiving the
critical differences in semiosis that extend beyond purely human knowledge.
Keywords Semiotics, Information science, Biology, Language, Communication, Epistemology
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
The role of boundaries in differentiating among academic disciplines is considered essential;
however, as Sugimoto and Weingart (2015) explain, these boundaries can be variable and are
often not well understood. Library and information science (LIS) as a discipline, for instance, can
be said to be based on certain symbolic boundaries constructed historically from the
rationalization and reification of “information”as a thing of particular value to the human
intellect that can be described, stored and retrieved, allowing the discipline to make rapid
progressin conjunctionwith various technological advances, its owndiscourse largelycentered
on the study of documents and domains, data and metadata in relation to user needs. LIS
theorists,however, are continuallytesting these boundaries, with such recent contributions as
Bates’s (2022) proposalfor a completely newinformation proto-paradigm,Hjørl and’s (2021) call
for a more rigorous approachto the evaluation of information organization and retrieval to be
based on the philosophy of science and Bawden and Robinson’s (2020) overview of gaps
betweendisciplinaryviews of informationand contemporaryeffortsbeing made to bridgethese.
Much more broadly, Madden (2004,2014) has highlighted the importance of boundaries as
a prerequisite to life, describing the evolution of information interpretation within all living
systems from the cellular to the social, and arguing that with the development of each
boundary, the accompanying requirements for additional energy have been the primary
JD
79,4
1006
The author wishes to acknowledge the helpful and insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers of
an earlier version of this paper.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 2 August 2022
Revised 13 December 2022
Accepted 15 December 2022
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 79 No. 4, 2023
pp. 1006-1026
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-08-2022-0168
impetus for new information needs. While energy is clearly essential to all functions within
living systems, such a bounded view of information neglects the role of thresholds in
interpretation. Although boundariesare limiting by definition, thresholds can also appear first
as boundariesbut, once approached, mayprovide entry to further exploration and insight.
The concept of “threshold”itself is transdisciplinary, ranging from the physical scien ces, in
which “thresholds”objectively define the amount of stimulus required to trigger a reaction or to
increase the likelihood of an outcome, to the human sciences, in which “thresholds”subjectively
definethe experience ofmaking a sequential,social or spatialtransition. Brier (2003,p.72)notes
that, for information research in particular, “threshold”discussionsare“situated at th e crossroad
of the scientific worldview and its cybernetic theory of information, general epistemology, the
bio-psychological theory of cognition and semiotic theory of signification.”
The “semiotic theory of signification”to which Brier refers is semiotics, the so-called study
of signs, which extends from the biosemiotic analysis of bacteria quora employing chemical
cues to initiate group movement (Kł
o
s and Płonka, 2021), to the interpretation by various
animal species of environmental signs (Maran, 2017), to the archaeological evidence for Homo
erectus showing physical traces of their prelinguistic semiotic activities of 1.75 million years
ago (Barham and Everett, 2021), to semiotic structuring of cultural acts of signification in
racist encounters (Timmermans and Tavory, 2020), to the increasing influence of computer-
mediated semiotic systems on humans (Floridi, 2015).
Semiotics focuses on the interpretation of signs, and while the concept of “semiotic
thresholds”is not yet fully defined, it is generally taken to encompass both a “lower semiotic
threshold”at which semiosis (sign activity) begins to take place and an “upper semiotic
threshold”at which semiosis begins to be symbolic (Rodr
ıguez Higuera and Kull, 2017). LIS
research normally focuses on the upper area of this threshold, at which symbolic activity
becomes semantic, in accordance with LIS’s traditional emphasis on recorded knowledge, but
a better understanding of interpretation in other living entities could ideally inform
epistemological considerations in LIS as well.
This paper provides a “threshold”perspective complementary to Madden’s“boundary”
perspective on information interpretation for LIS. It reviews classic work by Eco, Peirce and
Sebeok, as well as the contributions of contemporary researchers exploring a variety of
today’s semiotic threshold zones.
Semiotics and semiosis
Semiotics derives from s^
ema, the Greek word for sign, although the word itself did not emerge
from its Greek translation as “doctrine of signs”as briefly mentioned in Locke’sEssay Concerning
Human Understanding until a century later and has appeared in several variants, usually as
semioticsorassemiology(N€
oth, 1995). The two dominant semiotic perspectives today originated
in 19th century work by Charles S. Peirce in the United States and by Ferdinand de Saussure in
Switzerland. During this period, neitherPeirce’s focus on symbolic logic nor de Saussure’sfocuson
linguistics were of particular interest to librarianship which, as Olson (2004) explains, was then
mostly focused on developing practical library classification schemes based on those structures of
hierarchy ingrained in Western philosophy, and it was not until half a century later that their
potential relevance to the emerging field of information science became apparent. We focus here on
Peirce, however, as his work is foundational to the concept of the semiotic threshold.
Peirce’ssemiosis is based on his model of the semiotic triad: sign, object, and interpretant.
These three are: first, the sign, which can be anything (not necessarily physical) that can
evoke something; second, the object is that something (again, not necessarily physical) which
this evokes, third, the interpretant is the sign that translates and mediates the original sign.
His model focuses specifically on the relationships among these three aspects, which are all
necessary for semiosis (sign activity) to occur. The interpretant, the most innovative and
On thresholds
1007
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