ABSTRACT

A science that studies the life of signs within society is conceivable; it would be a part of social psychology and consequently of general psychology. Linguistics is only a part of the general science of semiology; the laws discovered by semiology will be applicable to linguistics, and the latter will circumscribe a well-defined area within the mass of anthropological facts. Structuralism itself would probably emerge as a method of analysis linking the fields of linguistics, anthropology and semiotics. Written language is prone to develop its peculiar structural properties so that the history of two chief linguistic varieties, speech and letters, is rich in dialectical tensions and alternations of mutual repulsions and attractions. The ultimate degradation brought about by war, it seems, lies in the disintegration of language's formal powers: the body of the poem's content is made up of the wreckage of patriotic songs and slogans.