Communicative Intent and Conventionality

Abstract

The next level of signs is constituted by signals, signs lacking internal subject-predicate structure that are used for purposes of communication. Differing uses of ‘signal’ reflect a basic methodological conflict that pervades all descriptions of primitive signs. In the first part of this chapter I sometimes use the term in a way frequently found in the writings of ethologists. Here it is used to stand for elements within coordinated reflex behavior that has evolved through the processes of natural selection. Such reflex behavior W. John Smith describes as producing consequences that “enhance the fitness of individual animals or the bearers of particular genotypes to survive long enough and well enough to be effective in passing their genes on.”¹ The term ‘signal’ can also be understood as applying to the wide class of signs distinguished from natsigns by being produced with communicative intent. Their mode of production insures they are not reflex responses triggered by environmental stimuli. This is the sense with which I shall be usually using the term. The distinction between a reflex movement for which there is a mechanical explanation and an intended action is notoriously difficult to draw, and will depend on how specific is the description of signaling behavior. A sufficiently precise description will usually convert what is initially regarded as reflex and invariant into what is variable. Much animal behavior seems mechanical and determined because of our gross descriptions of it.