Lotmanian referentiality and (cultural) semantics

Abstract

Lotmanian semiotics comprises a complex and wide-encompassing system for understanding meaning-making in culture and cultural dynamics more generally. Its complexity is compounded by Lotman’s historically and artistically minded orientation. In this paper we propose a brief rereading of a particular aspect of Lotmanian theory – what we will term Lotmanian semantics – based on an interpretation of modeling systems theory that, by our account, retains the form of the original by appealing to the notion of language employed by Lotman and deployed as propositional thought qua language. We revisit Sebeok’s critique of modeling systems theory and find it unnecessary for the interpretation that we make of Lotman’s semiotics, and we then propose a two-level interpretation of the theory that allows us to describe both perceptual and cultural phenomena as different semantic kinds.