Machinic Relations in the Production of Signs

Semiotics (or semiology) is a philosophically interesting approach to language that looks at the production an<1l characteristics of linguistic units called signs in order to arrive at an understanding of language in the broadest sense. By exploring such issues as the composition, boundaries, relations and even production of signs, insights may be gained into the nature of meaning and thought, and, beyond this, into the nature of being in general. The following discussion begins by identifying a problem with the "naIve " way of thinking about signs (as labels for things) and shows how the early structuralists attempted to solve it with a model of significations in a system of values. The limitations of such an approach are examined and the requirements for a more complete rethinking are explicated. While the seeds for this reevaluation are shown to be present in the work of Roland Barthes, particularly with his model of myth, and in the Pragmatic approach of Charles Peirce, it is in the claims of Gilles Deleuze that the most comprehensive reassessment is articulated