ABSTRACT
Letness is at the edge of chaos: it is anarchic, allowing the creation of infinite stand-for relations. Traditional semiotics is based on the utopian transmission model of communication. But communication, far from being a series of message-exchanging events, is replete with non-predictable chaos, since meanings are created through letness. We examine the current paradigm's major assumptions: importantly, that communication has predictable effects, meanings are shared, and messages can be studied in isolation, away from authors, readers, and contexts. Communication is a simple cause-and-effect, sender-message-receiver, stimulus-response conduit.
