10.5. The axiological dimension of lexical meaning

Besides perceptual properties and the more conceptual and abstract properties, a fundamental aspect of lexical meaning is provided by the axiological dimension, that is, the attribution of values of various kinds to the lexical configuration. This is perhaps one of the most difficult areas to grasp, given the inherent haziness of the concepts of value and valorization. The axiological dimension assumes at least in part the role played by the old concept of connotation, which, as we have already hinted, is ambiguous and liable to cause confusion. Clearly, though, a mere terminological substitution is not much use in clarifying the issue; it seems 10 be more productive to consider the problem from the point ol view ol the various sources Item whi< h tin attribution ol value may derive.

In general, semiotii theory tends to exclude subjective and individual valori

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zations, which are seen as private systems of symbolic attribution, on the grounds that they are not pertinent. These determinations, which correspond to the indi­vidual connotations already mentioned, are not considered relevant at a systematic level, but could possibly be the subject of a specific psycho-semiotics.¹⁷ Although this position is congruent with the policy of delimiting meaning only through intersubjective and socially shared components, it is not without its problems, because it excludes an important source of valorization processes, imposing an excessively rigid separation between subjective and social significations. However, the origin of the axiological dimension is seen to lie in social valorizations, in those "collective appreciations" which Hjelmslev was the first to point out.

io.$.i. Collective appreciations

Developing the Saussurian concept of value in a new direction, Hjelmslev sus­tained that each semantic field is based not only on intrasystemic meaning rela­tions (Saussurian value), but also on the evaluations adopted by a given commu­nity, and on the social opinion that it expresses. In this way the same physical "thing," to use Hjelmslev's expression, may receive very different semantic descrip­tions depending on the culture that is considered.¹⁸

It is important to underline that in Hjelmslev's view, social evaluations are not a kind of additional meaning, secondary connotations that are superimposed on the "real" basic meaning. On the contrary, they are an integral part of the linguistic meaning, and indeed have priority over the so-called denotative mean­ing. Moreover, the concept of value extends to all semantic areas, even those, like natural kinds, which seem to be less culturalized and more objectively defined. As Hjelmslev shows, this objectivity is an illusion because valorization, depending as it does on an evaluative attitude that deeply affects the forms and modalities of a culture, pervades all areas, even those that are apparently natural. Note that dif­ferent valorizations are not necessarily reflected in the form of the content. As Hjelmslev ([1954] 1959) observes elsewhere, Russian and Italian both possess a word for elephant even though an elephant occupies a very different role in these cultures than it does in an Indian or African one. This suggests that a purely structural analysis of the form of the content (and therefore of Saussurian value understood as a positional relation between forms) is not sufficient, thus seem­ing to indicate the need to move toward a more "substantialist" analysis (in Hjelmslev's sense) of content.

io.$.2. The thymic

In contrast to Hjelmslev, who derives value from collective appreciations and so­cial opinion, Greimas introduces the semic category of proprioceptivity, which, we will remember, results front the perception of one's own body and is rooted in

the deepen level <>l pnlsion.il investment, The principal source and origin of the

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axiological dimension is at this very deep level of the articulation of content. To refer to it, Greimas introduces the thymic category (motivated by the word thymia understood as "humor, basic affective disposition"), which serves to articulate the semanticism directly linked to the corporeal perception of the subject. The thymic category is composed of the contrasting pair euphoria/dysphoria (comparable to the Freudian pair pleasure/displeasure) and has an essential role in the transforma­tion of semantic microuniverses into axiologies. In fact, projected onto the semi-otic square of contrary and contradictory terms, connotating one side euphori-cally and the othet dysphorically, it produces the positive or negative valorization of each of the terms in the elementary structure of signification (Greimas and Courtes 1979: 396)

Seen in this way, value originates at a very deep level of semantic structure coinciding with an area of basic pulsional investment linked to corporeal percep­tion, which is then articulated on the plane of linguistic manifestation through the positive/negative (euphoric/dysphoric) opposition. At the basis of meaning it­self, there is thus an initial attribution of values that are not meanings but emo­tions and sensations connected with the most elementary and deep levels of our perceptual organization, such as corporeal perception. Note that the reference to the corporeal does not relate to an individual dimension, nor can the thymic be interpreted as an idiosyncratic system of valorization; rooted in a substratum of very deep experience close to the bios, its depth guarantees universality.

10.5.3. Tertiary qualities

It might be interesting at this point to attempt to draw a parallel between semioi ic theorization and the tertiary qualities of the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition, which have been widely picked up on by Gestalt psychology. According to 1 ,ocke, in addition to primary and secondary qualities, there is a dispositional quality which includes faculties, habits, capacities, virtues, and tendencies constructed by possibilities of the object itself. To primary and secondary qualities "might be added a third sort which are allowed to be barely powers, though they are as much real qualities in the subject as those which I, to comply with the common way of speaking, call . . . secondary qualities" (Locke 1975: 135). Tertiary qualities allude to properties that can be found in things and events, but which are not reducible either to perception or to conceptualization. As Bozzi observes,

tertiary qualities seem to be rooted in the innermost resonance box of the sen­tient subject, even though they too appear to be topographically situated in ex­ternal things. . . .Tertiary qualities are strongly present in die segments of the world which we have something to do with, even if it is not easy to describe their nature or find what it is thai supports 1 hem. (Bo/./.i 1990: 100; my translation)

But what exactly are tertiary qualities? In some respects (hey are similar to valori ration phenomena or perhaps, more precisely, to symbolic Correlation! between

certain expressive features and certain items oi semantic content which constitute

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values. Examples of this are attributions of particular states of mind to particular colors: good humor for red and sadness for black. Or again, particular correlations between the tensivity of certain movements and their phoric dimension: the slow­ness or speed of a movement may convey calm or agitation. In brief, I would define tertiary qualities as a symbolic expressivity inscribed in the natural world.

If black is lugubrious, red is vivacious. The shade of a large tree is restful and relaxing. A note in diminished seventh is tense and chilling. A slow rising gesture is solemn. We are not here merely attaching stereotyped adjectives to simple things: in those things there are characteristics that attract precisely those adjec­tives, and these characteristics are not of a verbal or associative nature, bur are perceptual ingredients inside the things themselves. (Ibid.; my italics)

Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of the approach of Gestalt theorists to these phenomena is that they collocate them "within the things themselves." According to Koffka (1935: 7) "each thing says what it is ... a fruit says 'Eat me; water says 'Drink me'; thunder says 'Fear me'; and woman says 'Love me."' The position of Gibson (1979: 138) is similar: "these values are vivid and essential features of the experience itself. . . the handle 'wants to be grasped', and things 'tell us what to do with them.'" Tertiary properties are thus located in the experienced object, in the same perceptual space as all the other properties such as colot, form, move­ment, and sonority, and are in no way projections of feelings or the result of associations. The expressivity of the natural world claims an absolute ptiority here and seems to be constituted as a kind of basic "thymism" directly inscribed in world entities, rather than in cotporeal perception as it is for Greimas.

The parallel with the thymic categoty is not a mere pretext; tertiary qualities also articulate their expressivity, we could say their value, according to an opposi­tion of attraction/repulsion (which relates to the euphoria/dysphoria pairing). Gibson substitutes the term tertiary properties with that of affordances, echoing the German Aufforderungscharacter, namely, "the character of an invitation—but extensively also of repulsion—used by Kurt Lewin to indicate positive and nega­tive valencies that connote objects in the environment and guide behavior" (Bozzi 1990: 104; my translation). The collection of positive and negative valencies that emerge from the affordances are, as has been said, in the experienced object and in the various elements that make up the environment, thus constituting a system of attractions and tepulsions that are inscribed in the world. However, this strong realist option, which is fiercely sustained by Gestalt psychology, is hand to inscribe in a dichoromous opposition between objective and subjective, but cuts across these tetms, rewriting the subject/object telation in a new way.

An important fact about the affordances of the environment is that they are in a sense objective, real, and physical, unlike values and meanings, which are often supposed to be subjective, phenomenal) and mental. But, actually, an affordance is neither an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An afumlance cuts across the dichotomy ol .subjective-objective, and helps us to

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understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer. (Gibson 1979: 129)

In this petspective the usual positions of subject and object are shifted and radi­cally reformulated; organisms do not project complex sets of private sensorial of emotional experiences onto an external and objective world; rather all the entities distributed in the world are linked to all other objects, some of which are essential carriers of affordances for the others.

If we reconsider the thymic category in this light, it proves no longer to originate in the cotporeal perception of the subject, from which it is then pro­jected to the external world; rather, it is rooted in meaningfulness that is consti­tutive of the world, which then affects the subject and its corporeity.¹⁹ We could perhaps think of affordances as intentionalities already inscribed in the figures of the world (think of the examples cited by Koffka and Gibson) which have their own phoric value of attraction or repulsion, and that form a complex system of interactions between entities in the wotld. Corporeal perception would thus seem not only to cause investment of value, but also to some extent respond to values present in the environment, a perspective which may suggest an ethological read­ing of value, given that affordances understood in this way are probably based on deep archetypes linked to universals of survival (predation, flight, nutriment, se­curity, and so forth).