Open AccessA sign is not alive — a text is
Author(s) -
Kalevi Kull
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
sign systems studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.17
H-Index - 7
eISSN - 1736-7409
pISSN - 1406-4243
DOI - 10.12697/sss.2002.30.1.21
Subject(s) - sign (mathematics) , semiotics , action (physics) , epistemology , process (computing) , feature (linguistics) , linguistics , sociology , computer science , cognitive science , philosophy , psychology , mathematics , physics , mathematical analysis , quantum mechanics , operating system
The article deals with the relationships between the concepts of life process and sign process, arguing against the simplified equation of these concepts. Assuming that organism (and its particular case — cell) is the carrier of what is called ‘life’, we attempt to find a correspondent notion in semiotics that can be equalled to the feature of being alive. A candidate for this is the textual process as a multiple sign action. Considering that biological texts are generally non-linguistic, the concept of biotext should be used instead of ‘text’ in biology.