Intellectual Performance and IQ Measurement: Methodological and Conceptual Differences between Past and Present

Eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith wrote that “a man of solid learning and knowledge” knows everything there is to be known. To be a universally educated person in the 21st century, this model is no longer feasible. If Adam Smith is pro knowing everything, Oscar Wilde objects by claiming that it is better to know absolutely nothing. And this is what might well be regarded as the state of the current world, where knowledge, in its absolute form, has become more of a ubiquitous dream than an achievable goal. 

Perhaps for this reason, the interest of researchers in the beginning of the 20th century moved from the pursuit of omnipotent knowledge in the Faustian tradition to the pursuit of understanding the flexibility to knowledge acquisition. The argument of boundlessness of knowledge available for accumulation is what can be rather discouraging in today’s society. For example, if there are more than several hundred thousand articles published since the 1950s in the field of psychology alone, what are the chances that one person will have accumulated that knowledge? 

Do the math: assuming there are a minimum of 300,000 articles (which excludes books, dissertation abstracts, posters, and other forms of academic publications), and that it takes a person approximately 1 hour to read and to accumulate the knowledge of 1 single article, this makes 300,000 hours of reading time (it would be assumed for the sake of the argument that each article makes its own contribution to the general idea of knowledge). Three hundred thousand hours of reading is equivalent to 18,750 days of reading (assuming that each day a person would read for 16 hours). This is equivalent to approximately 51 years (calculated by 365 days a year – leap years would not make much of a difference). If one multiplies this average by the number of fields that publish (some have published more), if one adds other types of publications, if one takes into account the fact that during these 51 years, there will be on average 50 x 51 times more publications (assuming that the rate of publications remains constant, which is does not – it has been increasing geometrically since the 1950s), one can understand the clairvoyance of Oscar Wilde. 

Unfortunately, research of the knowledge acquisition process and the ability to acquire knowledge and skills has not been very helpful in determining how it would be possible to surmount these obstacles (in fact it seems to contribute to the confusion by about 70,000 articles). By “ability of knowledge acquisition”, one should understand intelligence in the context of this text. 

Intelligence has been defined by Ramey and Blair (1994), among many others, as:

The sum of component and coordinated cognitive processes that allow individuals to contemplate and achieve specific aims. These aims contain the universe of practical, artistic, scientific, athletic, philosophic, academic, and other domains of knowledge that mankind is able to produce. These domains of knowledge vary individually and culturally within a given time period and change ontogenetically for the individual, and historically for cultures and subcultures, over time. (p. 60)

This also explains the functions of intelligence and its necessity in daily activities for differentiation, memorization, concept formation, reasoning and strategic thinking. Each of these processes strongly suggests that intelligence would be independent from environmental influence. If anything, these functions would shape the way environment is perceived. Differentiation refers to the ability to discriminate one object or event or another type of element from another one. Thus, the internal perception (the intelligence) determines the environment and not the other way round. Memorization refers to the act of representing internally a previously experienced event, object, thought or other experiences. Thus, the internal processing (the intelligence) determines how the environment will be processed and not the other way round. Concept formation refers to the symbolic representations that are generated by the individual and that are to be projected onto the outside world. Thus, the internal conceptualization (the intelligence) determines how the outside world will be changed. Reasoning refers to the ability to focus on and apply the rules of logic, mathematics, and others. Thus, the internally stored information (the intelligence) would determine how one interacts with the external world. Finally, strategic thinking refers to the ability to make inferences and organize the decision processes based on the other 4 functions. Thus, it is the intelligence that guides the way a person would interact with the world. 

Measurement of intelligence has become a core interest of researchers in the field of intelligence. Intelligence, however, is an amalgamation of extremely complex processes which are not entirely understood and which stand alone amidst the many questions about thinking that have been posed. One of the attempts to measure and explain what intelligence constitutes of is the Stanford-Biten intelligence scale (which resulted in more than 500 hits in the psychology database PsycInfo). The development of this test was initially in the beginning of the 20th century by Alfred Binet. The concept of intelligence quotient as he defined it is IQ score (referring to Mental Age) divided by the chronological age and multiplied by 100. Thus, for example, if a person has the mental age of a 29-year old but is in fact only 20 years old, then the IQ score would be 145. The caveat is that around the age of 16, the ratio between mental age and chronological age levels off and would not constitute changes throughout the lifetime. As such, the average score would about 100, with anything falling high above and below considered abnormal (defined mental retardation and as superior giftedness respectively). 

The 5th edition of the Stanford-Binet manual assesses 4 areas of intelligence: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, abstract and visual reasoning, and short-term memory skills. These four areas are further subdivided in 15 subtests. The way these scales are developed goes back to psychometric designs and the basic methodological issues associates with scale and index development. The validation of a scale is a vital component of its development. The validation involves administration of the test to many samples of people, evaluating the results, revising the scale, comparing the results with other scales and theoretical frameworks which make predictions about the same concepts and re-test the scale again after the revision. This process, also referred to as triangulation (see Neuman, 2006), is, however, the time limitation associated with the measurement of intelligence. 

Specifically, Flynn (1996a) summarizes his research suggesting that since the introduction of IQ tests, the gain in IQ scores has resulted in inflation of the results, which makes understanding intelligence and IQ as one concept much harder. Flynn suggests that “the time between the advent of industrialization and the beginning of IQ gains is probably short and the two may well coincide” (p. 17). With this, Flynn introduces the methodological limitations and environmental influences that come to be associated with IQ measurement. 

This paper will outline both the methodological issues that have been discussed in this context, as well as the environmental influences as a possible explanation for the observed changes. Specifically, the paper will look into the time development of the tests and their administration to evaluate the likelihood that the observed changes are an artifact of the testing process; furthermore, the paper will look into the environmental factors which accompanied the observed changes and relate these factors to the testing process; finally, the paper will attempt to present an understanding of the current state of intelligence measurement, hemispheric specialization, and neuroscience discoveries which relate to and explain the concept of intelligence as a measurement of human nature, rather than an interindividual difference. 

Since the very first tests in the 1900s, the most widely used IQ test, the aforementioned Stanford-Binet, has been revised on 5 occasions. Each of the changes has been accompanied by new investigations about the validity of the test, new items that relate more to the modern person, and elements have been added and removed wherever necessary. With each revision, the validation processes was required and as such a new population sample was assessed for its ability to fulfill the criteria set by the test. Unfortunately, IQ tests over time can be viewed as an artifact of the standardization and the basis for comparison of those tests. Because of the 5 standardizations during the century of existence and use of the Stanford-Binet test, the measurement from one generation to the next differed in terms of the comparison basis. Specifically, a test standardized 20 or 30 years before its administration, results in, paradoxically, lack of generalizability because the obtained results will be a reflection of the norms, criteria, standards, etc. set for the previous generation (the generation of the standardization. 

The result of such a comparison is inflation in the scores and the results associated with them. Specifically, Vernon (1982) performed an analysis, which scored Chinese Americans against the obsolete norms of the different generation, and concluded that the participants had higher mean IQ than white Americans. This question was initiated due to the observed advantageous performance of Chinese Americans. The researcher then concluded that there must be environmental differences that determine the change associated with IQ differences between Chinese Americans and white Americans. 

In 1991, however, Flynn, aware of the limitations about IQ standardization, adjusted the same IQ scores and found out that they were no longer higher than the IQ scores of white Americans. This, however, posed yet even harder question to answer: What is it that increases the performance and achievement of Chinese Americans but does not influence general IQ score? This question requires a whole new evaluation of what IQ scores actually measure. It appears from results such as these that achievement is not necessarily related directly to IQ scores. This further implies that IQ measurements may be irrelevant with respect to the ability to use acquired knowledge. 

To illustrate this with a metaphor, one can equate IQ measurement with the measurement of all of the people’s shadows. If measured at the same time of the day, and at the same location on the earth, the measurement will correlate perfectly with a measurement obtained by conventional height assessment regardless of the time and day. However, as soon as an external/environmental factor is changed, e.g. the time of the day, the shadow length will change as well. This measurement will also correlate with the actual conventional measurement but will suggest ‘change in the height’ if compared to the previous measurement. While in reality it is simply an artifact of the measurement process, it may be construed as a change due to the comparison basis that stays stable. And as with measurement at different times, it has been reported that IQ has changed and has increased over the decades. What appears to be (relatively) constant is intelligence. 

These features of the IQ tests pose some questions to researchers. The artifacts of the measurement process relate to intrinsic conceptual limitations of the IQ measurement, intelligence and their relationship to achievement. Particularly, the questions pertain to the ever-lasting debate in the psychological sciences “nature vs. nurture” and the implications and influences that each of these brings into reality. 

It has been put forward, for example, that the process of measurement of IQ in the first generations of the test had no time limitations given to participants to answer the questions. This lack of time limitation resulted in greater involvement in the questions but also reduced the number of heuristically based replies and also the number of responded questions. As such, the IQ score reflected much more the actual conscious intellectual ability of the individual rather than an automatic learning ability. 

Going back into the past, every generation has supposedly been more scrupulous than the succeeding one. Therefore, its members have exhausted themselves by making sure each answer was corrent and wasted scoring chances by refusing to guess on harder items. The significance of this hypothesis is that if it were true, we would have a diagnosis of how some IQ tests go astray as measures of intelligence. (Flynn, 1996b, p. 198)

For example, Flieller, Jautz, and Kop (1989) performed an analysis results both with time and without time pressure with respect to the comparison between generations. What they found, however, was that the variance of the poorer performance of the last generation’s scores was entirely explained by the performance on the completed items rather than the number of completed items per se. 

This hypothesis could have potentially explained the change of IQ over the years and yet the perfect functioning (and lack of change there off) in everyday situations. With the results obtained by Flieller and colleagues, it is not possible to explain the change in results with time limitations alone. 

A methodological aspect that can further relate to the possible improvement on the scores of IQ tests but no intellectual increase is the increased popularity and use of IQ measures which may potentially result in increased familiarity of the test taker with the material and thus hinder the measurement of actual abilities. This hypothesis, however, has been disconfirmed as repetitive taking of the test improves IQ score only marginally and the rate of increase is reduced sharply after the initial increase of about 5-6 points (see Flynn, 1996a for a detailed discussion). 

Another hypothesis put forward in recent decades refers to the nourishment factor and the improvement of nourishment over the last decades. Theoretically, better nourished brains would function better in every day life as well as in the test room. Problematic, it still remains, is the fact that better nourished brains cannot explain the lack of change in everyday performance; it can only account for the increased test performance. This, however, did not seem troubling to Schoenthaler, Amos, Eysenck, Peritz, and Yudkin (1991) who assessed the performance after vitamin-mineral supplement consumption. Their experimental groups were given three different amounts of and the same supplement. Interestingly, only a moderate amount of the supplement resulted in significant improvement of performance. 

The amount of nutrition has changed over the years in the various countries depending on the economic situation, the political regime, the social class and structure, etc. For example, both World Wars have been of influence to the nutrition of the nation and have lead to decrease for the countries involved. These differences, however, as presented by Flynn (1992) in his analysis of The Netherlands during and after the Second World War, suggests that the effect on IQ gains over time “was nonexistent” (p. 346). A further methodological issue regarding nutrition is its relation to other factors such as improved pre-school home environment, as well as the correlation between the financial possibilities of a family (which also relates to, for example, increased amount of books at home, better schooling, more attention to the children, etc.). Storfer (1990) analyzed the possible influence of these factors are found out that all in all they could account only for about 11-point intelligence gain since 1900, which is below the observed gain. 

It appears so far that none of the attempted theories manages to explain the abnormal results. Moreover, the new questions that those results pose do not advance the understanding of knowledge acquisition or knowledge organization. 

Another hypothesis, which reflects a more complex interaction with the external world from a very early stage of one’s life, has been put forward by Ramey and Ramey (1992). What they propose is a developmental priming mechanism, which promotes positive cognitive development, and they specify 6 factors, which contribute to this mechanism:

1. Encouragement of exploration
2. Mentoring in basic skills
3. Celebration of developmental advances
4. Guided rehearsal and extension of new skills
5. Protection from inappropriate disapproval, teasing, or punishment
6. A rich and responsive language environment. 

These 6 factors define the early childhood experience (and vary from culture to culture, from family to family, from child to child) and as such they represent an important contribution to the daily lives of the children during the period when they are under the influence of external factors the most. The reasons for the greater malleability at this early stage relates to historically, bio-medically and socially defined contexts. From a historical point of view, the importance of early childhood education has varied depending on cultural background as well as educational standards set in the different countries. Socially defined norms require a different amount of involvement on the side of the parents, which also relates to country- and culture-specific organization. Bio-medically, the malleability of the mind has been shown to be the greatest at the early stages of the development when the brain still grows, connections between different parts of the brain as still being established, and functions are still being defined. 

Of particular importance for the clarification of the issue between the intellectual performance and the IQ measurement disparity is the bio-medical research, which asks if the individual differences in such basic neural processes as nerve conduction velocity can cause individual differences in the higher mental processes involved in the measurement of intelligence or vice versa. 

The first question refers to the limitation that the central nervous system imposes on the whole human thinking due to properties intrinsic to the levels of information processing (from simple tasks such as choice reaction times, to more complex tasks and problems such as the ones found in the IQ tests). These intraindividual differences exist on various levels of the information processing channels and as such may affect the complex psychometric tests. For example, hemispheric specialization in logical and creative thinking has been investigated with various methodologies. Specifically, it has been shown that the left hemisphere is specialized for lexical processing, analytic and logical thinking (see Gott, Rossiter, Falbraith, & Saul, 1977; Gazzaniga & Smylie, 1984; Deglin & Kinsbourne, 1996; Drews, 1987; Collins & Loftus, 1975; Nottelmann, Wohlschläger, & Güntürkün, 2002; Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1997). The right hemisphere, on the other side, has specialized in semantic processing, global and abstract processing and restructuring of problems (e.g. Drews, 1987; Leehey, Carey, Diamond, & Cahn, 1978; Sergent & Hellige, 1986; Schooler & Melcher, 1995; Fiore & Schooler, 1998; Goldberg & Costa, 1981). Despite the specialization of left and right in discrete processing of information, it has been further suggested that for everyday tasks, one needs “the whole brain” (Hartmann, Goldenberg, Daumüller, & Hermdörfer, 2005; see also Dimond & Beaumont, 1971). Hartmann and her colleagues examined two patient groups and compared their performance on everyday tasks such as coffee making to the performance of healthy controls. Patients had either left or right hemisphere damage and the results indicated that independent of the hemispheric damage, the patient groups did not manage to perform adequately on these everyday tasks. This finding was interpreted by the researchers as an indication of the importance of the interaction between the two hemispheres and the impossibility to handle the task independent of which hemisphere is damaged. 

It, thus, appears that damage in a particular brain region can result in difficulties in acquiring knowledge. The importance of this assertion can be further strengthened by an intrinsic shortcoming of lesion investigations. Brain research investigating patients with lesions has made conclusions about the involvement of the lesioned area guided by the shortcomings associated with performance of that patient. However, what is in fact assessed is not what the particular damaged area cannot help in, but what the rest of the system can do without it. 

The biological factors presented so far can potentially explain the lack of change in the achievements throughout the years. The biological basis for brain development is genetically pre-defined and as such it cannot change for mere 100 years. It has been suggested, however, that there are neurons, which can contain information that passes along from generation to generation. This assertion, however, remains an assumption and future tests need to clarify this. 

It appears that biological differences cannot yet explain the changes in IQ and the stability of general intelligence at the same time. Social and environmental factors are just as well incapable to define the existing difference. It appears that the definition of IQ needs to be refocused to include components that it has not and to exclude components, which are irrelevant for everyday intelligence tasks.

Merdjanova (2005) suggests a new functional definition of intelligence. Knowledge acquisition is not simply about the sensorial perception and the acquisition of memory structures, not simply about understanding the cognitive processes and being able to guide one’s own thoughts into a desired direction. Her work has focused on the multi-sensory experiences that allow for an evaluation of the environment and the projection of this internal evaluation onto the sensorial perception of the outside world. This loop gives the opportunity to learn not simply by memorizing but internalizing, by developing own concepts based on internal representations, by projecting the artistic vision to the outside, by experiencing physically the ‘new’, etc. These domains may vary specifically depending on the cultural background. They, however, manage to account for the existence of multiple level of intelligence and that each of these levels can be affected by environmental as well as subconscious factors. 

By refocusing intelligence on reflective regulations, understanding of one’s emotions, facilitation of thought and expression of emotions, it is possible to explore the new boundaries of knowledge, which pertain to the Faustian tradition. The boundaries of this model are cultural because culture is a small part of the perception and ‘making sense’ of the external world. On the other hand, it is an internal plan for the approach to the outside and inside world. These features make intelligence distinct from IQ measures which focus on the way one processes external information while disregarding the internal sources of this information.

Intelligence, however, requires the conscious feel of the environment and the conscious ability to map the internal onto the external world and the other way round – simultaneously. Thus, IQ tests do not necessarily need to measure the constructs they are currently assessing. They need to focus on the interactive and flexible loop-type components of knowledge acquisition. 

The emotional involvement in daily cognitive processes has only recently been brought to the attention of researchers by Damasio who has put forward a hypothesis that suggests that the emotional evaluation of the context and its relevance are as important for any process as the cognitive/analytical processing of the situation (see Damasio, 2005). The emotional factor has not been assessed, controlled for, partialed out, or taken into consideration in any other conceptual, methodological or statistical way. It is conceivable that as a factor, it has mediated the effects observed throughout the decades and have influenced the ability of people to process information, to make projections, to control the thoughts and to guide the decision process. As such, IQ tests fell pray of the precision, which they so strongly strive for. 

Adam Smith’s statement about knowledge being graspable in the 18th century cannot hold true, unfortunately. The development of understanding about knowledge acquisition has lead researchers to the construction of multiple tests that presumably assess the ability to acquire knowledge. Researchers have, though, paradoxically, been unable to explain occurring changes in the scores of generations. Flynn has researched extensively the change of IQ score and the relation to the lack of change of intelligence. His conclusions are conservative in that they point out the factual results but cannot explain the disparity. The descriptive nature of his investigations has increased interest in other researchers who have attempted to provide an explanatory evaluation of the observations and have concluded that potential social and biological factors can influence IQ but not intelligence. 

Specifically, this paper summarized theories proposing that the risk-attitude in the different ages of IQ development has lead to the different attitude of participants in their answering of questions, that nourishment differences over the years have resulted in better or worse performance and other social reasons. Perhaps the most influential social explanation, or rather a methodological one, appears to be most compelling suggesting that the standardization procedures associated with each revision of the IQ test, sets an anchor against which each subsequent test taker is judged. Due to the costly nature of such revisions, they happen only occasionally (every new generation) which results in inflation of the results. This, however, does not explain why even after the validation and adjustment of the newly obtained results, researchers still face the problem of increased IQ and no change in intelligence. 

As Damasio suggests then, it could be perhaps a question of further investigation of brain related regions and connectivity. On the technical note, however, it is not impossible yet to take into account all brain regions at the same time let alone to calculate specific connectivity. The constant exchange in the brain makes the processes dependent on each other. Thus, intelligence is necessarily bound to what would be ideally measured in IQ tests. It yet remains to be observed how these future IQ tests will manage to map what they want to measure to the actual measurement. This would be the future question that Adam Smith may pose – if one does not know everything in the world, how would one make sense out of the world?

References:

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Drews, E. (1987). Qualitatively different organizational structures of lexical knowledge in the left and right hemisphere. Neuropsychologia, 25, 419-427.

Fiore, S. M., & Schooler, J. W. (1998). Right hemisphere contributions to creative problem solving: Converging evidence for divergent thinking. In M. Beeman and C Chiarello (Eds.), Right hemisphere language comprehension: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience (pp. 349-371). NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

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Flynn, J. R. (1991). Asian Americans: Achievement beyond IQ. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Flynn, J. R., (1992). Cultural distance and the limitations of IQ. In J. Lynch, C. Modgil, and S. Modgil (Eds.), Education for cultural diversity: Convergence and divergence (pp. 343-360). London: Falmer Press. 

Flynn, J. R. (1996a). What environmental factors affect intelligence: The relevance of IQ gain over time. In D. K. Detterman (Ed.), Current topics in human intelligence: The environment (pp. 17-29). NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Flynn, J. R. (1996b). Scots, the physiological correlates of IQ, and the Milwaukee Project. In D. K. Detterman (Ed.), Current topics in human intelligence: The environment (pp. 197-210). NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

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Goldberg, E., & Costa, L. D. (1981). Hemisphere differences in the acquisition and use of descriptive systems. Brain and Language, 14, 144-173.

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Semiotics and Other Sciences: Intentionality and Interpretation. Employing an Interdisciplinary Approach.

The formal attributes of language have fascinated the research disciplines for the shear volume of possibilities in explaining the birth, evolution and development, use and abuse of language. The available material for analysis provides a prolific inspiration to the curious minds. This fascination has been explored by literary theorists, ethnographers, linguists, evolutionary and developmental psychologists, communication scientists, neuroscientists and many other disciplines. Combining the available literature on this topic from all the disciplines would perhaps facilitate the investigations into questions which have remained unanswered in the years by the individual scientific approaches. This paper aims are combining two approaches - a classical semiotics approach to language understanding and a neuro-psychological approach. Notably, the paper will first outline the classical understandings of semiotics and the semiotic theory applied to language including the view points of Saussure, Peirce, and Eco. This paper will aim at pointing out possible ideas for further discussions of the importance of the sender and receiver in the semiotic context from a psychological-communications point of view. The paper will then outline the neural construction of the brain that takes care of language processing. The neuroscience approach provides basis for further transdisciplinary interpretations of semiotic structures. Finally, the paper will combine the two approaches into an attempt to explain the concepts and phenomena reported by semioticians such as language evolution, communication, and understanding with the means of the psychological findings reported in the literature. Throughout the paper, a story by Paulo Coelho will be used as an illustrative tool for various hypothetical communicative situations.

1. Semiotics

1.1. Saussure

Ever since Saussure explained that language is a system of signs, the concept of communication is changed. As a pioneer of the semiotics theory, Saussure formulated the basis on which subsequent theorists developed their viewpoints. His definition of language as a system of signs, he points out (1916/1986), is comparable to the alphabet, forms of politeness, military signs, and others. As such it is part of the social psychology, he continues, and its existence becomes deterministic. The rigorous rules that would determine the classification of signifiers and signified (sign-vehicle and meaning, respectively) are the basis for semiology. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is the basic system of “language” and serves as the outline for the linguistic theory of Saussure. The signified appears to have been defined more clearly although it also leaves several questions. Eco (1979) sums up the definition as “half way between a mental image, a concept and a psychological reality” (p. 14). The signifier comprises of the idea and the image. With these two concepts at hand, it appears that communication should be effortless. Eco concludes that “the sign is implicitly regarded as a communicative device taking place between two human beings intentionally aiming to communicate or to express something” (p. 15). What remains questionable in this idea, however, is to what extent the “meaning” is intrinsic to the signifier and the signified. In instances when it is not, the “meaning” needs to be shared between the communicative parties in order that “language” functions as a communicative device.

1.2. Peirce

To this dual perspective of a sign and an object, Peirce adds the “interpretant” - a third integral part of the chain of semiotics. In this sense, with Peirce the importance of communication becomes more prominent. The three abstract semiotic entities in Peirce’s semiosis are defined as explained: 1. sign is something that will convey a message only to those for whom it fulfills a certain capacity; thus sign will exist only in its relationship to the interpretant (one can already see the greater connection between the parts of the semiotics chain  in Peirce’s version as compared to Saussure’s); 2. the object, for which a sign would stand, would exist as an entity only as long as what it stands for can be interpreted by the interpretant; and 3. the interpretant needs to share this meaning in order to understand what the sign stands for in connection to the object. This triad is the core of what qualifies intentionality and artificiality in the communication context. An advantages characteristic of this definition is the needlessness of a sender. For example, symptoms may be present without any intentionality but they may still be understood. For Saussure, reducing symptoms to signs would not have been possible. An important point that is yet to be added to the equation is that of intentionality.

1.3. Eco

Eco’s definition goes beyond what Peirce and Saussure define. As long as the sign is “taken as something standing for something else” (Eco’s emphasis), it is considered a valid participant in semiosis. This re-evaluates the importance of an interpreter as any possible interpretation can be made by any possible interpreter. This definition relies on what Eco calls “culture as a semiotic phenomenon”. He explains that “the systems of meaning are organized as structures which follow the same semiotic rules as were set out for the structures of the sign-vehicle” (p.27). Culture is what contains the set of codes to decode and encode information and this can define every entity as a semiotic phenomenon. This definition liberates ideas to define “intentionality”.

1.4. Limitation, questions to address, and some further discussions

The three approaches, although they fulfill the need for definition of the semiotic context, do not succeed in explaining broader communication contexts and specifically the evolution of the processes which moderate the exchange of information. The ability of the receiver to decode the message is what the encoder will aim at facilitating. But how? This creates a systemic interaction between sender and receiver with the message in between. The paper will now present several questions that pure semiotics cannot addressed because of the different methodological approach. 

If one were to characterize the type of information, one can observe either “natural phenomena and symbols” or “artificially (and/or intentionally) produced phenomena”. This presents the first and simplest to interpret dimension of the type of information. Next would be a dimension on the side of the sender that one could refer to as intentionality. Finally, the interpretation level would round up the 3rd dimension of the semiotic space. In an even more ambitious space, one can include a time dimension. It, however, will not be discussed as it can only provide a momentary snapshot which can be position in the 3-dimensional space at any time and would simply necessitate moving around with the change of time. 

(Eco does not clarify such a structure - for him, natural signs are “(a) physical events coming from a natural source and (b) human behavior not intentionally emitted by its sender” [p. 16]. In this context, it was considered necessary to come up with a clearer structure and this lead to the definition of the 3-dimensional space. Although, it is somewhat true that all physical events coming from a natural source would be classified as not intentional, the proposed classification is especially necessary in the context of human behavior as outlined below). 

Having these 3 dimensions, one can observe the following semiotic scenarios: a) unintentional physical events coming from a natural source which are not being interpreted b) unintentional physical events coming from a natural source which are being interpreted, c) unintentional events coming from a sender in a communication context which are being interpreted by a receiver, d) unintentional events coming from a sender in a communication context which are not being interpreted by a receiver, e) intentional events coming from a sender in a communication context which are being interpreted by a receiver, and f) intentional events coming from a sender in a communication context which are not being interpreted by a receiver. 

(A question from the systemic point of view may come here - the presented model assumes that information flows constantly only in one direction - always from person 1 to person 2 and that person 1 is the sender and person 2 is the receiver. However, the reality of the situation requires the consideration of the fact that person 1, while sending any type of information, will always also receive information which they would interpret as a receiver and would thus modify the information that they are sending. This constant circle of exchange of information creates a complex situation which may pose additional questions. For the time being, this paper will focus on the more stripped-down communication and semiotic contexts where information flows from the sender to the receiver without other information flowing the other way at the same time. In other words, for the purposes of this paper, the sender will be considered independent of their function of a constant receiver and vice versa.)

Semiotics as it appears to be summarized by Eco limits its interest to scenario b) and not to a full extent to scenarios e) and f). The intentionality dimension on the side of the sender does not appear to be relevant for a semiotician such as Saussure, Peirce or Eco (although, Eco is more lenient in this respect). One can illustrate the importance of the other scenarios with an example of a metaphoric description by Paulo Coelho. In “Like The Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections” (2007) Coelho retails a metaphoric image of several functions of a pencil (see Appendix). In this scenario, the boy is the receiver of the information and the grandmother is the sender of the information. The pencil on its own can be considered on many different levels from different points of view as Eco outlines: a) the physical level, b) the mechanical level, c) the economic level, d) the social level, e) the semantic level. 

The physical level of the pencil concerns the fact that it is made of wood and that it encloses a graphite in the middle (although one must note that there are pencils that are made entirely of graphite without the wood - which changes the semiotic meaning of “pencil” - for simplicity’s sake, we would not consider those pencils “pencils”). The mechanical level defines the function of the pencil as a writing equipment which needs to be hold and controlled by a hand (or robotic mechanisms) in order to function as such. The economic level can define the pencil as a commodity with exchange value (ranging from few cents to several euros) which closely links it to the social level where a particular pencil can indicate a certain social status (Faber-Castell pencils, for example, would often be associated with higher social class). 

None of these 5 levels, however, addresses the metaphoric “information” that is associated with the pencil in the story by Coelho. The levels that Coelho create a quite different and they can only be characterized as metaphorical. The information that they contribute would be considered semiotic only when the intentions of the sender are clear and when the interpretation of the receiver are clear as well. For example, if the boy was to use the same semiotic metaphor to tell a friend of theirs that they are like the pencil without explaining prior to that the meaning of the metaphor, the friend would not interpret the information, despite the boy’s intention. On the other hand, if the boy talks with a friend of theirs and the friend just happens to mention a pencil that they have lost and that had sentimental value to them (because it was, for example, a memento from the hotel they stayed at during a vacation where they had a great time), the boy’s association may be that of empathy but may also immediately trigger the metaphoric semiosis created by the grandmother explaining the multi-faceted meaning of the pencil. Thus, the intentionality of the message remains absent, although a certain interpretation is made (an interpretation bound to the recipient's semiotic background). 

These small scenarios were meant to illustrate the dissociation that exists between intentionality and interpretation which semioticians seem to ignore partially. Although Eco does mention approaches that are sender-focused or receiver-focused, he seems to be oblivious of the fact that both are equally important. 

2. Alternative perspectives on semiotics

2.1. Communication theories

Communication has been a focus of research in psychology and sociology for centuries with Charles Darwin establishing a solid background in the development of the understanding of facial expressions and their communicative and evolutionary form. The importance for semiotic theories lies in the explanation that has been put forward to transfer message and how that message can be contained on many levels of the communication context. The subsequent paragraphs will summarize how Darwin viewed the evolution of facial expressions which to these days are taken to have a communicative function and how that evolutionary background would help in the understanding of the distinction between intentional and unintentional communication. 

In his book “The expression of emotions in man and animals” (1872), Darwin summarizes his observations on his son’s facial expression development, as well as what he had observed on his many travels to indigenous tribes. He speculates that facial expressions had first and foremost a specific function associated with specific behavior that has only later has come to be associated (similar to conditioning) to an emotional state. For example, the expression of disgust which is characterized by curling of the lips, drawing back of the head, perhaps even putting the tongue out of the mouth and other. This can perhaps best be illustrated by an improvised experiment as described by Cornelius (1995). What he describes is a process for comparison between the actual observed behavior and the expression of disgust. The characteristics of both appears to be identical which, as suggested by Darwin as well, shows the connection between the functionality of a particular expressions and how it has become associated with an emotional state. Because disgust appears often in the context of one wanting to spit some ingested product out (an unpleasant product), the facial behavior has come to be associated with the unpleasant experience of having something unpleasant in one’s mouth. This simple illustration has been part of the research focusing on the universality of facial expressions for the past 50 years when research in this field shifted to cross-cultural investigations which will be addressed later in the paper.

This related to semiotics in two ways. First, it appears that there is a certain non-communicative aspect of every facial expression but the communicative function has come to be associated with the other functions. This suggests that as soon as the emotion has been recognized on the face of a communication partner, the other function of that facial expression is also activated in the semantic network of the receiver of the information. For example, if the boy hears that the story that the grandma was writing was about a pencil instead of him, the boy may show the expression of surprise which is characterized with wide opening of the eyes, perhaps opening of the mouth, moving the head forward. The evolutionary background of this facial expression has been traced back to the collection of information from the environment. Because of the wider opening of eyes allowing for better vision, and the better smell perception with the opening of the mouth, and the movement towards a source of information associated with the movement of the head forward, the grandmother would interpret the facial expression of surprise as the attempt of the boy to get more information. And then she would proceed giving more information about the pencil story. The boy would be sending, perhaps, a signal of surprise intentionally but the meaning that this surprised expression would convey (i.e. “I am surprised, please give me more information”) is not necessarily conveyed intentionally because the boy may not want to disturb his grandma when he hears that the story is not about him (if it were not, the grandma would probably not provide an explanation without receiving the encouraging question from the grandson) but it is understood in a particular way despite the obvious lack of intentionality. 

The second important point connected to the semantic understanding of emotions has to do with the implicit influence on the understanding of the other levels of information conveyed in a communication context. It has been established that particular facial expressions are processed faster than others (i.e. the correct recognition rate was faster). This can again be explained in evolutionary terms when it is important to recognize danger (i.e. emotional expressions of anger are recognized faster than expressions of disgust, Cornelius, 1995) but also it is important to recognize positive facial expressions (i.e. happiness is recognized faster than surprise, Cornelius, 1995). This recognition rate has been shown to influence the processing of other emotionally charged information (e.g. Goldstein, 2006). This has to do, perhaps, with the convergence of the emotional information in a specific area of the brain which deals with putting together emotional information from all sensory modality and all sensory contexts. This means that an emotional expression of happiness will influence the perception of emotionally neutral picture. And so when the boy is fascinated by the multiple facets of story of the pencil and shows that smile to his grandmother, the boy may not realize that this communicates a positive experience which may be interpreted by the grandmother as a confirmation that the story that she was writing was exciting and insightful which she may not have been so certain of before. This example illustrates how the unintentionally sent message is understood by the grandmother. But at the same time, it may also influence her perception on an unconscious level; i.e. both parties of the communication context have processed (encoded and decoded) information without their intention. 

2.2. Cross-cultural communication

[Culture in this context will be defined as broad as shared knowledge between a group of people. As such, a person may also share cultural background with several groups and belong to different cultures at different times or at the same time.]

With the development of the post-industrial society, traveling and cultural exchange has become part of the political, economic, cultural, and other spheres of exchange. When it comes to communication in these exchanges, misunderstandings occur more prominently. In particular, the situation becomes complicated when intentionality of sending and the understanding is compromised because of the impregnated differences in values, norms, beliefs, cognitions, and many others. These discrepancies are connected with the underlying question of “nature vs. nurture” - a question that must not be ignored in the semiotic line of arguments.

There is a general understanding that there is no phenomenon that would be purely natural or purely nurtural and that would be immune to influences from both levels. In understanding facial expressions, for example, if it were not for the universal evolutionary development of emotional expressions, one would not have observed a list of universal facial expressions recognized by various cultures, including ones that have never had interaction with other cultures (e.g. the Fore from Papua New Guinea investigated by Ekman & Friesen, 1971). In his study, he found out that there are 6 facial expressions which the Fore clearly recognized as the same that a Westerner would have. This consistency, according to Ekman, can only speak about the universality and the evolutionary nature (as outlined by Darwin) of emotional expressions. [Of course, the picture is slightly more complicated but the complications do not contribute to the further understanding of semiotics and thus would not be discussed here.]

An interesting example of a cultural pattern that impregnates and influences the perception of emotional expressions has been reported by Ekman in the same study. According to his results, the emotional expressions for surprise and fear were often confused for one another by the Fore. The explanation that he proposes based on his subsequent investigations suggest that the two are confused because they often occur in conjunction to each other in the daily reality of the Fore. In other words, the cultural background, in which they grow up, influences the evolutionary in-built mechanisms of recognition. 

In the context of information transfer and communication, it appears that culture would play a role in the possible interpretation of emotional expressions (such as with the Fore who confused the pictures of fear and surprise). If the grandmother and the boy had not been sharing the cultural background that they are, perhaps the grandmother would not have been able to point out the clear meaning of the boy’s surprised facial expressions and may have interpreted it as partly fear (for the sanity of the grandmother whose writing a story about a pencil?). The lack of intentionality does not need to be related to the understanding of it in cases when the language for “decoding” the facial expression is not shared between the two parties. The context also plays essential role in the understanding of the signs and symbols and the intentionality impregnated in a communication context would then rely also on the interpretation of that context.

2.3. Contextual influences

The decoding of emotional expressions has for long been hypothesized to be universal for some expressions. However, there is evidence for the different interpretation depending on the context. A smile may be a smile but a smile may indicate happiness while another one may be perceived as fake because of complex contextual cues. An example of a contextual cue for the understanding of facial expressions would be the time dimension of a smile’s onset, apex and offset (Krumhuber, Manstead, & Kappas, 2007; see also Mihov, 2007). It appears that only a facial expression with specific duration of the onset, apex and offset would be considered genuine. Any deviation from that pattern would lead to the smile being perceived as fake. 

In terms of intentionality, it is possible after a certain amount of practice to acquire the necessary skill to fake a smile. It is not, however, possible for every person to fake a smile 100% and the intentionality to convey a smile when one is not necessarily happy is not communicable in all instances. Moreover, the dissociation is also present on the level of the decoder who needs to understand the cues that suggest a fake smile and the recognizability of the fake smile is not 100% either. An even more complicated scenario exists when the sender of the emotional expression creates a very convincing fake expression, which is interpreted as an indication for a certain emotional state, but other levels of the contextual situation contradict this emotional state. In yet another situation, the emotional expression may be very genuine but the contextual information may create a contradictory situation, which would necessitate a reappraisal of the expression. For example, if the boy starts crying when the grandmother tells him that he is like a pencil (a genuine emotional expression) and if the grandma had been told by (just for example) a teacher of the boy how much more sensitive than his peers he is (a contextual cue), the additional information may enhance the interpretation of the boy’s emotional expression and lead to a different behavioral response from the grandmother with greater emphasis on certain aspects of the pencil story which she may have not emphasized otherwise. The same phenomena can be applied to linguistic understanding, where language is even more an expression of cultural difference than in facial expressions.

2.4. Metaphoric language understanding and language development

Metaphor understanding has been the focus of interest for creativity researchers. A metaphor is simply a sign with a symbolic meaning which is attached to it by a group of people sharing this symbolic meaning. As such, metaphors may be understood by as few as 2 people only. Being embedded in a specific background knowledge/situation/context, they carry unique meaning beyond the face value associated with the words. Whether a metaphor consists of one word or a phrase is irrelevant. 

Investigations of the way the brain processes metaphors have unveiled that, compared to non-metaphoric phrases, the brain requires additional brain areas located in the frontal part of the brain. For non-metaphoric language (mother tongue only), the brain possesses a specially designated brain area (Broca’s area - language processing happens mostly on the left side of the brain despite the presence of Broca’s areas on both sides of the brain). To understand the metaphoric meaning, however, the additional brain areas also become active due to their connections to Broca’s area when the information encoded in the phrase cannot be decoded singly in Broca’s area. 

The additional brain areas associated with the understanding of metaphors have extensive brain connections to the memory and emotional system in order to process the information effectively. On the level of the language, a metaphor will not differ from any other word/phase in terms of the information that it brings. However, the additional background knowledge will “attach” the supplementary symbolic meaning. Thus the sign acquires new signification.

The story that the grandmother was writing implies the creation of a new metaphor - attaching new meaning to the sign “pencil”. By telling the boy the story, she creates common knowledge between them. The word “pencil” becomes a metaphor to the boy and every time he hears pencil (independent of the context), the 5 characteristics of the pencil that his grandmother outlines will become activated. Thus, even if a friend of the boy mentions “pencil” in some context, this friend will be unintentionally sending information to the boy who will be interpreting more than has been encoded in the message. Moreover, if the boy wants to intentionally make a reference to the metaphoric meaning of “pencil” when talking to a friend, he will need to explain the metaphoric meaning (and create the common background) to the friend in order to convey the intended message. Otherwise, the intentionality of the encoding will be present but the understanding (i.e. the decoding) will not be successful.

2.5. Semantic and conceptual networks and hemispheric specialization

Understanding and creating metaphors requires another important between the language decoding and the symbolic decoding - the activation of the associative network that links the language with the abstract meaning of the metaphor. The semantic and conceptual connection between words is an essential aspect. In the same way as a spider web one can connect a junction of the web with another one by simply following the web, the connection between the words can be achieved. Some words would be closer to others and thus it would take less time and effort of the cognition to associate the two words; for example, “love” and “heart”. The two words are closely linked conceptually and if presented with the word “heart”, a person would be much quicker at identifying the word “love” than the word “muscle” which is also a descriptor for “heart”. 

Research from neuroscience has uncovered several interesting aspects of the processes that happen in the brain with respect to semantic connections between the words. Evidence from various methodological investigation (discussed in greater detail in Mihov & Denzler, 2008) have suggested that the two brain hemispheres function differently from one another when it comes to language processing. Specifically, Gott, Rossiter, Galbraith, and Saul (1977) already suggested that the left hemisphere handles lexical processing better. They investigated the performance of commissurotomy patients (patients whose corpus callosum, establishing the connection and communication between the two hemispheres, is partially severed) on various lexical tasks. Under special experimental conditions, the patients were presented a word either to the left visual field only (reaching only the right hemisphere) or the right visual field (reaching only the left hemisphere). They were asked to provide the meaning of the word. The results suggest a strong left hemispheric specialization to process words and to identify their meaning. 

Connecting the identified meaning of two consecutively presented words is also carried out in the left hemisphere if the words have semantic connection only (e.g. “plane” and “train”) but not conceptual (e.g. “foot” and “shoe”). Drews (1987) presented pairs of words separately to one of the two hemispheres of slip-brain patients and only when the words were presented in the right visual field (left hemisphere) were participants able to identify the semantically related words as being related to each other (but they were not able to do that with conceptually related ones). The semantic networks with their unique separate knowledge structures with various levels have many extensions to other networks and depending on motivational state, mood, emotionality level, and other situational factors may have a facilitative or inhibitory effect on the accessibility and activation of other concepts. 

Interestingly, however, studies report that children do not exhibit the same specialization. Kempler and his colleagues (Kempler, van Lancker, Marchman, & Bates, 1999) observed that children perform equally well on lexical tasks independent of the hemisphere. There is a well-established consensus about the inverse correlation between the number of years at which one start acquiring new language skills and the proficiency in that language (in particular with respect to syntactic understanding and phonology; e.g. Johnson & Newport, 1989; Weber-Fox & Neville, 1996; Flege, Yeni-Komishan, & Liu, 1999; Oyama, 1976). This suggests that the early brain plasticity diminishes with age and settles (always) with specific functions being attached to a specific hemisphere. 

Although the primary language structures for language processing are always in the left hemisphere, certain functions relate to the right hemisphere. In particular, processing units of distant semantic knowledge (i.e. conceptual) appear to be associated with the right hemisphere. An experiment that illustrates these processes has been reported by Beeman, Friedman, Grafman, Perez, Diamond, and Linsay (1994; see also Drews, 1987). Participants in the study were presented with a series of seemingly unrelated words (e.g. foot, cry, glass) to only one of the two hemispheres. Immediately after the three-word presentation, another word was displayed on the screen (e.g. cut) and participants were instructed to press a response key if the word was spelled correctly and another key if the word was misspelled. The left hemisphere performed worse (i.e. slower) on this task because of its inability to connect the first three words into a new concept which was closely related to the target word. The right hemisphere, however, did not. 

It appears that metaphor understanding is not limited to one part of the brain and that both left and right hemispheres are necessary to fully understand the concepts. Considering the automatic transfer of information between the different brain areas, it is no wonder that the pencil metaphor will be activated in the boy’s mind even if “pencil” is mentioned by someone else but his grandmother without the intentionality of conveying the 5-fold meaning of the pencil. 

3. Semiotics and the other sciences - the future (?). Conclusions

The questions of semiotic decoding and encoding and intentionality, appear to be under the umbrella of certain biological and cultural factors. Examples of these factors with summarized methodological investigations had been discussed in the paper. There are still questions, however, that had not been addressed and that would provide curious opportunities for future research (by an interdisciplinary field). 

For example, the connection between language and emotion needs to be explored further before one reaches the next level of metaphor understanding. A phenomenon that has not received attention by researchers so far can be observed daily by people using different languages for daily communication. Cursing in a foreign language is perceived to be much easier to do than in a mother tongue due to their detachment from the primary language center, which has direct connections to emotional sectors which regulate the use of language. As such, one does not experience difficulties or discomforts in using the words. Analogically, one may also not feel identical when saying “I love you” in a mother tongue and a second language. 

Another fascinating field in need of further exploration is the existence of internal representations of the sign-function, which are back projected in the brain from the higher level cognitive processing regions to the lower levels. The brain possesses systems for the creation of an image to stimulate the same areas in the brain that would be stimulated if an actual observation is made (e.g. the verbalization of a word creates the visual characteristics of this same word - when one says “spoon”, one literally can see a spoon). This has great implications for cross-modal communication and cross-modal plasticity. These findings have even greater implications for semiotics when coupled with the emotional hypothesis as they suggest that the sign-function relationship is not necessarily intrinsic to the object, but are rather created by the interpreter who put the meaning in the object. The same would be implied by the metaphor development outlined in section 2.4 and by the context influences as outlined in point 2.3. 

Further support can be derived from an brief analysis of the “pencil” story. With her intention to create a particular background, the grandmother tells the boy the story. The created context of the boy’s surprise urges the grandmother to explain more. The intentionality to convey the message of the pencil and its 5 associative descriptions, is conveyed to the boy who learns the 5 characteristics and activates those associations every time the boy hears “pencil” when someone else mentions it. He can very actively visualize the pencil with its 5 characteristics (plus all the additional levels which are more intrinsic to the pencil as they have been outlined  according to Eco’s guidelines). 

The connection between the understanding of the communication context from the perspective of theory of semiotics and that of other disciplines appears to be very strong. The different approaches only support each other emphasizing different aspects and explaining different parts of the process. Semiotics is concerned with the human conception while psychology and neuroscience are interesting in how the human conception works in terms of processes in the brain and cultural differences. It appears that the sciences complement each other. 

The understanding that has been accumulated since Saussure has achieved new levels. It is now clear that there is a dissociation between interpretation and intentionality, that there are multiple meanings associated with a sign and that there is no single correct interpretation - these features are part of the new theory of semiotics. The story by Coelho have been used here to illustrate this new theory. The dissociation between the interpretation and the intentionality of a message has been illustrated to rely on the created contextual information, on the displayed emotional expression, and on the semantic network created at the moment of transferring the message. The connection between the sign, the function and the attached symbolic meaning can be explored even more with the input that affective neuroscience can bring. Coelho’s story is a starting point. All that is left to do is to create the metaphors and rationalize them for the communication partner.

4. References:

Beeman, M., Friedman, R. B., Grafman, J., Perez, E., et a. (1994). Summation priming and coarse semantic coding in the right hemisphere. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 6, 26-45.

Coelho, P. (2007). Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections. London: Harper.

Cornelius, R. R. (1995). The Science of Emotion: Research and Tradition in the Psychology of Emotion. NJ: Prentice Hall.

Darwin, C. (1872/1965). The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Drews, E. (1987). Qualitatively different organizational structures of lexical knowledge in the left and right hemisphere. Neuropsychologia, 25, 419-427.

Eco, U. (1979). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V. (1971). Constants across cultures in the face and emotion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 17, 124-129.

Flege, J. E., Yeni-Komishan, G. H., & Liu, S. (1999). Age constraints on second-language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Languages, 41, 78-104.

Goldstein, E. B. (2006). Sensation and Perception. CA: Wadsworth Publishing.

Gott, P. S., Rossiter, V. S., Galbraith, G. C., & Saul, R. E. (1977). Visual evoked response correlates of cerebral specialization after human commissurotomy. Biological Psychology, 5, 245-255.

Johnson, J. S., & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60-99.

Kempler, D., van Lancker, D., Marchman, V., & Bates, E. (1999). Idiom comprehension in children and adults with unilateral brain damage. Developmental Neuropsychology, 15, 327-349.

Krumhuber, E., Manstead, A. S. R., & Kappas, A. (2007). Temporal aspects of facial displays in person and expression perception: The effects of smile dynamics, head-tilt, gender. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 31, 39-56. 

Mihov, K. M. (2007). Encoding and decoding dynamic and static facial emotional displays: Conceptual similarities and methodological considerations. Unpublished Manuscript, Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen, Germany.

Mihov, K. M., & Denzler, M. (2008). Creativity and hemisphericity revisited: A meta-analytic review. Under review, Jacobs University Bremen, Bremen, Germany.

Oyama, S. (1976). A sensitive period for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 5, 261-285.

Saussure, F. (1916/1986). Course in general linguistics. IL: Open Court.

Weber-Fox, C. M., & Neville, H. J. (1996). Maturational constraints on functional specializations for language-processing: ERP and behavioral evidence in bilingual speakers. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 231-256.

5. Appendix:

Paulo Coelho, Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point he asked: ‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me?’

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson: ‘I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.’

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special. ‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’

‘That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

‘First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.

‘Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpner. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

‘Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

‘Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

‘Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. in just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action’

Literary Canons Revisited. An Evangelistic Investigation of the Future of the Literary Canon: Network Society and Amazon.com, Hegemony and Counterhegemony, and the Future.

[This paper has been written for a university course in literary theory in 2008.]

If one asked a literary critic today what they thought of the best seller “XYZ”, chances are that they would tell one that it is a momentary hype that will never last beyond the end of the literary season. It could come as a surprise then that the best sellers stays on the top-seller list for longer. The critic, however, will not change their mind – because they know best. And this is still how popular fiction is judged – book reviews are written by professionals with degrees in literary history and theory whose job is to read with the  “passion” of a cynic and with the “liberalism” of a critic. With the wide spread of Web 2.0 technologies the critical world is changing. This paper is an evangelistic prediction of the future canonization process, an outlook to the years when Web 2.0 technologies will be utilized to their fullest, extending hand to the next generation of social networks and network societies. It is a contention of this paper that the currently established notion of a canon, canonization and canonizers imposes a hegemonic grip on literary values and aesthetic judgements. The power of social media and networks is a counterhegemonic strike with the availability of technology not necessarily targeted at imposing a new mode for canonization but simply suggesting that the Canon is important only to the literary historian or theorist (in the same way as a literary history is of importance only to them; Johnstone, 1992).

To grasp the importance of canonization as a process and its implications for the aesthetic experience of the reader, it is essential to: 1) outline what is being understood by “canon” and to summarize the current process of canonization; 2) analyze the hierarchy in today’s literary reality with respect to the canonization process; 3) examine the current technological advances and the structure of the network societies and to predict their future implications to the process of canonization; and 4) evaluate the prediction for this future outcome and its longevity.

1. Harold Bloom, The Canon and The Literary … “Someone” – Briefly

The idea of the canon as a collection of books with artistic merit is an indication for the need to make a selection of all the available “things” to read. Bloom is perhaps mostly associated with the idea of the Western Canon (Bloom, 1994) and idea of a literary canon as a whole. Pointing out that it is impossible for anyone today to read all that is available, it becomes necessary to establish certain criteria for the selection. Although there may well be personal factors, there is, according to Bloom, an overarching reason for the reading of one work of literary art over another by everyone. The importance of the canon, Bloom underlines, is not related to the religious meaning of “canon” but rather to the literary Art of Memory. Taking a bit of an elitist stand, Blook argues that “aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions” (p. 17). As such, it relies on aesthetics because “I urge a stubborn resistance whose single aim is to preserve poetry as fully and purely as possible” (p. 18).

Following Blooms ominous predictions, this paper will address some of the questions that the Canon poses:

The Canon […] has become a choice among texts struggling with one another for survival, whether you interpret the choice as being made by dominant social groups, institutions of education, traditions of criticism, or, as I do, by late-coming authors who feel themselves chosen by particular ancestral figures. Some recent partisans of what regards itself as academic radicalism go so far as to suggest that works join the Canon because of successful advertising and propaganda campaigns. The compeers of these skeptics sometimes go farther and question even Shakespeare, whose eminence seems to them something of an imposition. If you worship the composite god of historical process, you are fated to deny Shakespeare his palpable aesthetic supremacy, the really scandalous originality of his plays. (p. 20)

At this point, the paper will stop looking into the past. The future forms of canonization and concepts will be covered in greater detail to find out if literary canons as known today would become a second case of literary history (see Johnston, 1992).

2. Networks and the Spread of Information – the Power of the Masses

The power of technology today (although reaching only a portion of the available population) is what provides the space for innovation. It is not a question of what a particular innovation was innovated for but what the human creativity can innovate further with this innovation. It is the contention of this paper that the greater networks and information connectivity in the social space, the greater the power of the masses for transmission and creation of information – be it about the political, economic, social, cultural, or any other world.

The innovations in terms of technologies can be summarized in several core processes: 1)the innovations that allow the spread of accessibility to internet and online buying, 2)the innovations that smart marketing trying to sell did not foresee, and most importantly 3)innovations based on the development of creative solutions for establishing connections between users. Each one needs elaboration.

With the invention of the internet for the purpose of spreading information in a closed environment, the idea of selling was not on the forefront. As soon as the spread of the “net” in the everyday life, however, the comfort and potential of advertising and commerce was established. Driving the development of secure online payments as alternatives to TV infomercial home shopping channels and order-by-catalogue, the industry flourished offering all kinds of goods and services (the improvement in postal services further facilitated the process of integration of online commerce). The ultimate goal of technological communication and information development is, according to Castells (2007), “the battle over the minds of people” (p. 238). What Castells, however, clarifies further is that this battle is no longer just between the state (an institution) which is traditionally the main site of power but now includes cultural industries and business media, and, importantly, the individual/the citizen. In this battle, the spread of information is what makes commerce, public ratings and the process of canonization most statistically objective.

The mass media system has been the main channel of communication between the political system and its citizens (Castells, 2007). Radio, TV and the press have dominated the exchange of information and the formation of information shaping the face of the market – i.e. holding the power (although Castells also admits that there are individual actors that exercise power over the media). What has been observed with the development and spread of the internet, however, is a new type of an audience. The concept of an audience has change from that of a passive audience to an active now where the media have an internal control but the audience is gaining more and more power by the choice they have – the audience decides about the source of information and this is why the media has to win the audience.

In summary, Castells argues that “the media are not the holders of power, but they constitute by and large the space where power is decided” (p. 242). Exploring the new network, he discusses the distribution of the internet, mobile communication, digital media and a number of social media tools that lead to the development of horizontal networks of information spread. The network society has the strength of being driven by people, having the information created and delivered by the audiences, transforming the user into a provider of information. Although an old technology, first put to use in 1969, the internet is reaching more and more users which now exceeds 1 billion (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2006). The systems of connecting people are not simply through the interface of the computer today but include short messages (SMS) and multimedia messages (MMS) via cell phones; access to blogs, vlogs, and podcasts on mobile devices; file sharing and peer-to-peer (p2p) networks and other social media. Thanks to the availability of these communications, individual communication acquires a personal character. This process has been coined “self-communication” (see Castells, 2007) to refer to the ability of an individual user to collect information relevant to them and to spread this information (in the same way as a big media network would) and to target its specific audience.

It is perfectly valid assumption, however, that this non-media information is not as precise in its content and not as reliable as the information coming from proof sources. The social media information transfer, however, relies (similar to the model Wikipedia employs) on the self-correction powers of the community: unreliable information is labeled as such, misguiding sources are taken with the grain of salt and plain wrong information is removed within seconds of its availability (ruining the reputation of the person who posts it) – quality control. The instantaneous distribution of information on the internet often relies on a push type of technology, RSS, which allows for a user to subscribe and have the information “pushed” to them as soon as it is posted online. Thus, even if the information is posted by mistake, and pulled immediately, it still reaches the users. And the power of the online community is its ability to aggregate information and sieve out questionable bits.

This new surge of alternative means of communication (which are also cheaper) necessitates changes in the way media networks distribute information. If people are able to sort out their own bits of important information and to aggregate the information to extract the essential bits (even if coming from contradictory sources), it is necessary to change the model of communication and, perhaps even more importantly, the values and norms attached to the bits of information and to the concept of reliability. It appears, however, that the new model will necessitate a shift from simply “availability” to “service”. An illustration of the need for a transition are a couple of recent iPhone applications – one of them written by an independent programmer and one by a retailer who is looking into new ways of reaching the clients.

The app SnapTell is an example of a memo/note-taking application giving the user the opportunity to take a picture of the cover of a book. The picture is then send to the servers of the company and is analyzed by software that (in less than 30 seconds) sends back the information to the user with the name of the book, the online price at various locations, an automatic search on google for prices and review, wikipedia articles, ebay search and others (see Appendix 1 for a screenshot). This immediate connection to online sources of information opens new doors for a buyer not only because of the potentially better price but also because of the opportunity to read user reviews, editorial reviews, author information, and many other pieces of information. This allows a user to decide before purchasing if it is worth it based on the reviews. The application that Amazon.com developed (the application is currently available only to US users) extends these features by making it possible to take a picture of any object and if not in their database, the user is notified as soon as the item becomes available. Other mobile platforms (the Android mobile phone operating system developed by Google) allow for scanning of barcodes (thanks to in-built cameras) and software reads the barcodes to the similar results.

The importance of such progress lies in the ability of the user to sieve out information better. The availability of information is measurable in terms of seconds and not in terms of years. On the longer run, this can be detrimental to physical stores which rely on the client’s lack of information about the competition (both in terms of price and, more importantly, in terms of quality and choice). Fundamentally, a remedy to the demise of the brick-and-mortar would be change of focus of what is being offered. Commercially, a bookstore may offer the opportunity to buy a book. However, unless one is looking for a specific book in mind, a buyer would rely on several heuristics: 1) choosing a book based on familiarity with the author’s other works, 2) choosing a book based on a recommendation (from a friend, relative, a book seller, a literary critic, etc.), or 3) choosing a book at random (which is further influenced by the positioning of the book on the shelves, cover design, price point, and others). These heuristics are all replaceable by the more efficient (and often more economic) online shopping approach. Thus, social networking, mass self-information and the new shopping experiences push the “old” way of shopping to modification, necessitating focus on service and on one-to-one interaction (at an affordable price): the power is in the masses.

3. Today’s Book Review and Canonization

The process of literature canonization can be particularly influenced by the empowerment of the masses. The essence of the canon is in its aesthetic appeal and value. Through the power of the new media and the network society, aggregation and mass-evaluation of literary works is possible. Specifically, a platform for this aggregation and public evaluation is provided through the multiple evaluations which are aggregated based on a common aesthetic understanding.

There are numerous advantages of the move towards internet in relation to works of literature. Banks (2004) points out as one of the most important factors is the searchability online. Many factors, among others fear of piracy, have contributed towards the lagging behind of making books available online despite the urge that has been observed in newspaper- and magazine-publishing, where online publications have become quite common. There is a trend, however, moving away from this reality (Google Book Search is currently driving this industry). On the practical level, this allows users to have access to a number of pages or even chapters and to evaluate the book before purchasing. Amazon.com launched a service on October 23, 2003 (Banks, 2004) for searching the entire text of books as well as “Search Inside the Book” feature. Revealing what is hidden between the cover combined with the opportunity for users to make decisions based on recommendations from other readers makes the process of buying much more focused. An indication of the facilitation of the process of selection of reading material is the reported increase by 9% in the number of sales for books with “Search Inside the Book” feature in the first year (Banks, 2004).

Arguably, this does not guarantee that the literary work is necessarily of high aesthetic quality and worthy of canonization. Linkov and colleagues (Linkov, LaPorte, Lovalekar, & Dodani, 2005) present the case of peer review in the medical sciences and the limitations of that process and propose that Amazon.com’s model is an alternative solution:

In Amazon.com, reviews have been divided into following categories: editorial reviewers (those associated with Amazon.com), customer, and spotlight reviewers. A reviewer becomes a spotlight reviewer by a form of popularity test. At the end of each posted review, readers are asked to vote, “Was this content helpful to you?” Reviewers who receive a sufficient number of “yes” votes are promoted to the category of spotlight reviewer and their reviews are given prominence. Thus, Amazon.com is reinforcing reviewers to provide helpful information in their feedback. Whereas traditional peer review process is only assessing the quality of material, Amazon.com system makes inferences about the quality of both materials and the reviewers themselves. We have suggested that Amazon.com system could be used in the area of quality control of materials on the Internet, offering an attractive alternative to peer review mechanisms. (p. 876)

The authors further quote the estimated cost of traditional peer review of an article between US$400 and US$1,600. Alternatively, the Amazon.com model comes for free and in fact is part of the purchasing process.

A problem associated with the canonization process based on recommendations of what others have liked and purchased and what is being recommended to reader is the inflation which may occur (is occurring?) because of these two factors. If a reader is recommended a book based on what they have liked in the past and what others (who have liked the same things in the past) have purchased (and liked now), it is much more likely that the reader will like the recommendation and leave a positive review which will be then recommended to someone else – a process of inflation of the positivism in reviews. This cycle of perpetual improvement of the recommendations has the potential to create various niches and to lead to an exceptionally customized and narrowed down canon. This transforms the model of the reviews themselves from not merely comparatively quantitative anchors between positive and negative aspects but comparatively qualitative anchors between one positive aspect and another positive aspect (defying to a certain extend the functionality and existence of negative reviews).

Perhaps as a bit of an alleviating remedy, one can argue that the system proposed by Amazon.com is taking care of some aspects of this low-level canonization. The argument is that although any book buyer can leave a review, not necessarily every reviewer will take their time to do that and each review is further reviewer by numerous potential buyers who can rate the usefulness of the reviews themselves. This framework encourages reviewers to be as precise and informative as possible, to provide objective judgements and to contribute to the community because of the contribution itself. The lack of professional incentive is perhaps an argument for the advantage of this system: a critical evaluation is done not for the sake of evaluation but for the sake of helping someone choose; not for the sake of compiling a list for posterity based on singular aesthetics but for the sake of a buyer here and now (one can, of course, argue that this commercial mindset is not the most ideal framework for aesthetic judgements).

There is one big problem associated with this narrowed down selection of positivism. Joanne Kaufman (2008) very recently addressed this issues in a rant review over the lack of high-minded ideas in book groups. She describes the case of a woman who is invited to join a book club only to find out that it would be difficult for her to make the members look beyond “Oprah Winfrey’s picks”. Her interest in the literary classics and the lack of such in her co-members could be a glimpse into the future of literary canonization. Based on recommendations and online reviews, the inability to sieve through intellectually and aesthetically superior works of literature may cause degradation of the quality associated with the canon.

In this context, it is important to look into the question: is the canon based on popular aesthetics or on intellectually superior quality? If the average, aggregated evaluation of aesthetic understanding of the popular masses is what determines the canon, then basic statistics would be enough to determine it. If, however, the canon needs to be based on intellectually superior qualities, then there would be no guarantee that the messages in the canonized literary works will transcend the pages to the minds of the average readers – which would, to a large extend, defy the idea of a canon as “something everyone should read”. Is the canon necessary for educational purposes or for collective memory? Is it for ideological information-transmission, or for propaganda empowerment (empowerment of the powerful or empowerment of the weak?)? Intellectual pull vs. intellectual suppression!

4. Counterhegemonies and other Hegemonies

Discussions about the power of institutions and a critique towards that power have been part of the art-theory discourse for almost a century with the critical analysis by Duchamps of the institutional approach to the label “art” for anything that is put in the right context (i.e. that of an art museum). The hegemony established by this institutional philosophy is in parallel with the current form of canonization: the critique of literature suggests that a work of art, a great canon, an aesthetically pleasing work of literary art is one that the critics have christened.

The power of Amazon.com to monopolize the market and with this the source of rating systems can be particularly influential in the canonization process. The availability of customer control over what is “good” and what is not has the potential to transform the model of canonization. If the canon has been determined by literary critics before, based on the hegemonic dominance of the power to say “this is an aesthetically good book and should be read”, this does not need be the case any longer. Now the customer has the power to decide what is good and what is not – the counterhegemony is the movement away from the job of the literary critic.

There is a question associated with this situation, however: is it the case that thanks to the availability of networks and the platform for the mass-canonization we have a network-canonization today (and not before) or is the network-canonization what has been going on along with the canonization from the critics all along (with the exception that only the critics had strong enough a voice to be heard in the wider world)? For example, Shakespeare’s work has been canonized and it still is read and bought by a large number of people. Is this popularity of Shakespeare’s works due to the fact that the works have been canonized by literary scholars or is it because it is appreciated by the vast majority of readers? In either of the two cases, a hegemonic framework is more likely to explain this popularity rather than a counterhegemonic framework (which would read along the lines of non-conformism and avoidance to read Shakespeare). What is interesting about the case of Shakespeare is how the new model is reflected.

Following a somewhat unplanned process of approaching the search for “Shakespeare” on Amazon.com as a casual buyer of his work (i.e. someone who does not look for a specific edition, or a specific work), a user lands (as of 14th Dec. 2008, 12:29 am Central European Time) on an unabridged deluxe leather-bound edition of Shakespeare’s complete works. The number of available reviews is not extremely big (only 65) considering the publication date of 1990) and the ratings are not overwhelmingly high with only half being as high as 5 stars (31 reviews with 5 stars, 13 reviews with 4 stars, 5 reviews with 3 stars, 6 reviews with 2 stars and 10 reviews with 1 star). These results, however, seem to be explained with the first review itself submitted by Brian Kendig:

I am not going to comment as so many have on the quality of the content of this book. When dealing with a writer like Shakespeare, it is unnecessary to critique his writing, because nobody would be looking at his Complete Works if they didn’t know if they liked his writing. However, I will try to give opinions that may help others decide whether or not to buy this volue of Shakespeare as opposed to another collection.

The reviewer (full review is available in Appendix 2) provides several points in his review that have nothing to do with the actual text (the binding, the thickness of the paper and the marginalia) and addresses only 1 aspect that is related to the text but has to do with the editorial information rather than with the literary work itself (according to the reviewer, there is no information about which of the conflicting manuscripts of King Lear has been used in this edition).

The discussion around Shakespeare has been addressed by Bloom himself (1994) as an important determinant of what constitutes a canonical work and how, perhaps, the question of the public vs. critics’ contribution to its popularity can be disentangled:

If it is arbitrary that Shakespeare centers the Canon, then [the School of Resentment] need to show why the dominant social class selected him rather than, say, Ben Jonson, for that arbitrary role. Or if history and not the ruling circles exalted Shakespeare, what was it in Shakespeare that so captivated the mighty Demiurge, economic and social history? Clearly this line of inquiry begins to border on the fantastic: how much simpler to admit that there is a qualitative difference, a difference in kind, between Shakespeare and every other writer, even Chaucer, even Tolstoy, or whoever. Originality is the great scandal that resentment cannot accommodate, and Shakespeare remains the most original writer we will ever know. (p. 25)

5. Conclusion

This paper looked into several aspects of canonization of literary works: 1) the old way of canonization and 2) the criteria behind such a selection as outlined by Bloom (and as still relevant for the future), 3) the hierarchy of the literary canonizers of the past (the hegemonic grip of the literary critic) and 4) the future development of empowerment of the network society. Canonization refers to the evaluation of the aesthetic qualities of a literary creation and its proclamation as educationally viable and worthy of reading entity. It is not a question of the artist’s background or their political, ideological or ethnic background but rather the aesthetic excellence and value of their work – this Bloom emphasizes explicitly and repeatedly.

Several questions come out from such an outlined: is it necessary (and possible) for a canonized literary fiction to remain in the canon forever and if not forever, for how long does it remain there; who are the canonizers and why are they worthy of such a function; and how is this going to look in the future when the network society takes a firmer grip of its own needs?

The first question is to remain unanswered (indefinitely?). The remaining questions, however, can be approached from the angle of literary theory, mass-media communication and a bit of evangelism. This paper outlined the hierarchy in which the top is occupied by the canonizer – the one that tells a reader what is good to read. If this approach is parallel to the institutional approach in art history, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to defends its future theoretically. A more pragmatic solution would be a simple analysis of the acceptance of such a framework.

It has been summarized in this paper how this framework is about to change. The availability of certain technologies allows for a new approach to canonization centered around connectivity. In the past, it was common to go to the bookstore and browse through the available titled. One used to search for a book by the author (if one knew something of them already), or maybe based on a review one has read in the paper, or following the “new” list, or even listening to a recommendation of a friend. The narrow circle of this social area of recommendations, marketing and elitists, although still centered around aesthetic values, is rather flat and uni-directional.

With the development of online resources, the users have much richer access to what is being published. Furthermore, it is not simply the fact that the readers now have bookshops with bigger variety of books than any other library of physical bookstore, but the user also has access to reviews, second-hand options and online previews. The online platforms gives the chance to anyone to be an equal partner in the evaluation for relevance of any literary work, transforming the average reader (with a bit of enthusiasm) in a literary critic. The power of the aesthetic judgement is shifted to the hands of the daily purchaser/the casual reader reinventing the hierarchy of canonization into a flattened horizontal circular structure.

As with any model, this also has its limitations. For one, a model based purely on recommendations (which are calculated based on the positive ratings, past purchasing history and liking of a particular book) is likely to be biased towards the positive extreme. Qualitatively, however, this issue is perhaps taken care of when, idealistically, the review process will no longer be about “good” and “bad” but about “good for…” and “good for …”. This positivism is still rooted in the aesthetic judgement – the collective aesthetic judgement – opening niches and closing highways. But just as with a bottle-neck – a movement in a niche is much more vigorous and charged than aimless wandering in a field of corn. In the longer run, what one needs be concerned with is, as Bloom himself points out, individual rather than societal aesthetics.

References:

Banks, M. A. (2004). Amazon.com opens the books. Online, March-April. 30-33.

Bloom, H. (1994). The Western Canon: The books and school of the ages. FL, USA: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Castells, M. (2007). Communication, power, and counter-power in the network society. International Journal of Communication, 1, 238-266.

Johnstone, R. (1992). The impossible genre: Reading comprehensive literary history. PMLA, 107, 26-37.

Kaufman, J. (2008). Fought over any good books lately? The New York Times, December 7. Retrieved Dec. 8th, 2008 from <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/fashion/07clubs.html>

Linkov, F., LaPorte, R., Lovalekar, M., & Dodani, S. (2005). Web quality control for lectures: Supercourse and Amazon.com. Croatian Medical Journal, 46, 875-878.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2006). Maturing Internet news audience – broader than deeper: Online papers modestly boost newspaper readership. Pew Research Center Biennial News Consumption Survey. Retrieved Dec. 4th, 2008 from <http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=282>

Appendix 1

After taking a picture of the cover of the book, it takes 7 seconds to get the result:

The user is given the option to purchase the book online from several platforms:

And furthermore, a user is able to share the findings of this book with other people (i.e. make a recommendation):

Appendix 2:

Full review submitted by Brian Kendig (California) on January 7, 2000.

I am not going to comment as so many have on the quality of the content of this book. When dealing with a writer like Shakespeare, it is unnecessary to critique his writing, because nobody would be looking at his Complete Works if they didn’t know if they liked his writing. However, I will try to give opinions that may help others decide whether or not to buy this volume of Shakespeare as opposed to another collection.

The binding, as some have said, is not of the highest quality, it seems. My copy is completely new (as evidenced by the “gilding” on the pages still sticking in places), yet there are significant creases where the book opens.

The thickness of the paper, which some have claimed is lacking, to me seems quite adequate, especially for a tome of this magnitude. I have recently been using extensively The Norton Anthology of American Literature, whose pages are as thin as tissue paper, so my basis of comparison may be off.

The text itself claims to be unabridged. However, for texts such as King Lear, where at least two conflicting manuscripts exist, the editors give no information as to what choices they themselves made regarding the text. Text that in other editions is noted as having been adjusted by editors is in this edition laid out as truth, with no indication whatsoever. If you are interested in this sort of thing, I would recommend the individual plays published by The New Folger Library, which have excellent editorial markings.

Another problem, in my opinion, is marginalia. This volume contains none, which makes it tremendously difficult if one intends to use this book as reading. Shakespeare is difficult reading even with textual notes, and without borders on impossibility. I’m not sure how easy it is to include extensive footnotes in an anthology like this, but little things like the accents to show when the stress in certain words (e.g. obliged) falls on the last syllable would be nice. For the individual plays with great notes, again I recommend the Folger Library editions.

I would add that the things I have critiqued here are not all things that might matter to another reader. I present them as my feelings, so take with a grain of salt.