Victoria Welby And The Science Of Signs

Victoria Welby (1837–1912) dedicated her research to the relationship between signs and values. She exchanged ideas with important exponents of the language and sign sciences, such as Charles S. Peirce and Charles S. Ogden. She examined themes she believed crucially important both in the use of signs and in reflection on signs. But Welby's research can also be understood in ideal dialogue with authors she could never have met in real life, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Susanne Langer, and Genevieve Vaughan. Welby contends that signifying cannot be constrained to any one system, type of sign, language, field of discourse, or area of experience. On the contrary, it is ever more developed, enhanced, and rigorous, the more it develops across different fields, disciplines, and areas of experience. For example, to understand meaning, Welby evidences the advantage of translating it into another word even from the same language or resorting to metaphor to express what would otherwise be difficult to conceive. Welby aims for full awareness of the expressive potential of signifying resources. Her reflections make an important contribution to problems connected with communication, expression, interpretation, translation, and creativity.

This book introduces and provides commentary on a selection of published and unpublished works by Victoria Welby and exponents of the Signific Movement in the Netherlands. Beyond offering an important contribution to the reconstruction of a neglected phase in the history of ideas, it evidences the theoretical topicality of significs, in particular the focus on the relation of signs to value, meaning, and understanding, on verbal and nonverbal behavior, and on language and communication.

In "What is Meaning" (1903) the author elaborates on the fundamental tenets of her theory of sign, to which she give the overall term significs . One of the main obstacles to an adequate theory of meaning, in Lady Welby s opinion, is the unfounded assumption of fixed sign meaning. "There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as the Sense of a word, but only the sense in which it is used the circumstances, state of mind, reference, universe of discourse belonging to it. The Meaning of a word is the intent which it is desired to convey the intention of the user. The Significance is always manifold, and intensifies its sense as well as its meaning, by expressing its importance, its appeal to us, its moment for us, its emotional force, its ideal value, its moral aspect, its universal or at least social range." This facsimile of the 1903 edition of "What is Meaning" is accompanied by an essay on "Significs as a Fundamental Science" by Achim Eschbach, and "A Concise History of Significs" by G. Mannoury.

Significs is one of those (by no means exclusively) sign theoretically relevant movements which arose at the turn of the century. It established a philosophical tradition which, from its very inception, was interlaced with widely varying movements ranging, for example, from Breal's semantics to Carnap's and Neurath's logical empiricism. In this volume, an international group of well-known scholars from various disciplines undertakes a broad re-evaluation of significs and its development which promises also to yield a better knowledge of research approaches in linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, and psychology with which significs was related or vied for acceptance. Contributions deal with Lady Welby's biography and socio-cultural background, the intellectual context of the signific movement at the turn of the century and the relationships between Welby's semiotic and philosophical ideas on the one hand and those of her contemporaries (Breal, Peirce, Schiller, Vailati etc.) and followers (Ogden, Van Eeden, Mannoury etc.) on the other. Descriptions of the historiographically most important archive materials, a bibliography of publications on Lady Welby and her significs and an index of names conclude the volume.

This book considers the work and influence of Charles Sanders Peirce, showing how the concepts and ideas he developed continue to impact and shape contemporary research issues. Written by a team of leading international scholars of semiotics, linguistics and philosophy, this Companion examines the growing impact of Peirce's thought and semiotic theories on a range of different fields. Discussing topics such as narrative, architecture, design, aesthetics and linguistics, the book furthers understanding of the contemporary pertinence of Peircean concepts in theoretical and empirical fashion. The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics is the definitive guide to the enduring legacy of one of the world's greatest semioticians.

This is the facsimile 1911 reprint of Victoria Lady Welby's very last publication Significs and Language. The Articulate form of our Expressive and Interpretative resources. This volume also includes two major essays from the author's hands, 'Meaning and Metaphor' (reprinted from The Monist 3:4, 1893), and 'Sense, Meaning and Interpretation' (reprinted from Mind 5:17 and 18, 1896), and a selection of several noteworthy and unpublished essays. In the introduction to this volume the editor H. Walter Schmitz exemplifies how Lady Welby developed her significs in discussion and cooperation with numerous highly divergent scientists and scholars of her times; how her ideas influenced other scholars in Europe and the US; and how significs sank to near oblivion and was finally recovered.