Negotiations on meaning between semiotics and language philosophy: from Yiheng Zhao’s semiotic perspectives

Abstract Western language philosophy studies meaning from diverse aspects, with a core concern for how meaning is formulated and interpreted. The artificial-language and natural-language schools are two camps in this philosophical undertaking, the former insisting on scientific logic and positivism in meaning verification while the latter emphasizing subjective intention and context in meaning interpretation. Semiotics provides another semantic perspective that tips toward the theory of the natural-language school. This article compares the semantic thought of analytical language philosophers with that of a Chinese semiotician – Yiheng Zhao, who defines meaning as the interpretative potential between any two signs, and, being the product of signifying activities, meaning should be stipulated as dynamic process instead of a static essence. Thus, the interpretation of meaning is totally free of the shackles of logical positivism and radical interpretation required by the artificial-language school. On the other hand, differing from the natural-language school, meaning in Zhao’s semiotic theory can be either expressive or communicative, which means meaning that has originated from an expresser does not necessarily need an interpreter like the utterer-audience binary in Grice’s theory. Compared with Anglo-American analytical language philosophers, Zhao shows more affinities in semantic thought with the continental philosophers – Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, Habermas, and Ricoeur.