The Semiotic Projection i.e. Linguistic Adaptation of an Otherness in Culture. A Linguistic-Anthropological Essay

Abstract

In this article one semantic phenomenon is tentatively taken into consideration. This phenomenon emerged when historical discourse was under investigation but it is not limited only to historical texts. This phenomenon – which is in the absence of a better term called the semiotic projection of meaning – is crucial for language in general, for consciousness and cognitive mechanisms of human being. Every culture, confronting itself with such or such otherness – the otherness either of diverse cultures or past events, it has to overcome this otherness that is to say to adapt it which means that it has to impose on it a form that is more meaningful for itself. Putting it operationally, it has to inscribe the otherness in question into its own horizon of sense, and consequently – into its own semantic system. The understanding of past of understanding of an unknown culture can be seen as an adaptation of them. In this article such an adaptation is considered within three domains: history, other culture and universe of animals.