Productive perils: on metaphor as a theory-building device

Abstract

Metaphors constitute a relevant method for both building and making sense of theories. Semiotics is not exempt from their influence, and an important range of semiotic theories depends on metaphors to be meaningful. In this paper, we wish to examine the place of theory-constitutive metaphors considering the interaction view and the extent to which some areas of semiotics, particularly, the semiotics of culture and biosemiotics, are enriched by having metaphors dominate the way we think about them. The intention of the paper is not to document the different metaphors that have built semiotic theory, but rather to observe through a number of examples that semiotic research contains theory-building metaphors and that these are productive means of developing semiotic thinking further, with the caveat that theory change can be unexpected based on how we build metaphors for our theories.

In the Case of Protosemiosis: Indexicality vs. Iconicity of Proteins

“…Due to that, the functional correlation between DNA bases and amino acids has been attributed a biological nature of life. The description of the genetic code and related processes in the body, for example, in terms of gene-driven processes, splicing, etc., has helped to anchor the widespread use of the linguistic metaphor of the living (Raible 2001;Rodríguez 2018;Jakobson 1971;Markoš and Faltýnek 2011;Lacková et al 2017). Returning to the initial discovery of the DNA structure (Crick 1962(Crick , 1964(Crick , 1967(Crick , 1968, the basic relation between matter and function in the case of the biosphere of Uexküll or the language in the case of de Saussure lies between the medium representing DNA entry on one hand and amino acids as the building blocks of proteins on the other hand.…”