From the meaning to the world: the catasemiosis

Abstract

We now know that meaning arises from an initial interaction between the bodies of living beings and stimuli from the outside world. This process, which leads to the development of semiotic structures, is known as anasemiosis. However, the description of semiosis would be incomplete if we did not take into account a second movement in which the body is involved in a second interaction with the world: that of the action exerted on this world by meaning. This movement can be called ‘catasemiosis’ (if the Greek prefix ‘ana-’ refers to a movement from the bottom up, ‘cata-’ refers to a movement from the top down), and the complete semiosis is made up of the interactive cycle of anasemiosis–catasemiosis.

After outlining the reasons why the consideration of catasemiosis has been largely neglected by the sciences of language and meaning, this paper situates catasemiosis within the general process of semiosis, establishes the complementary nature of the processes of anasemiosis and catasemiosis, and demonstrates that their structures are comparable since they are based on the same principle of opposition – or dipole. The discussion emphasizes the existence of an actional drive in living organisms, complementary to the interpretative drive, and shows that routinization is the catasemiotic equivalent of categorization at the anasemiotic level. Considering the sign as a tool and stressing the importance of the concept of energy in semiotics, it pays particular attention to tools, conceived as extensions of bodies, and to their mediating function.