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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY
Semiotic Sociology
Risto Heiskala
Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology
Series Editors
Nick Crossley
Department of Sociology
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
Peeter Selg
School of Governance, Law and Society
Tallinn University
Tallinn, Estonia
In various disciplines such as archeology, psychology, psychoanalysis,
international relations, and philosophy, we have seen the emergence of
relational approaches or theories. This series, founded by François
Dépelteau, seeks to further develop relational sociology through the
publication of diverse theoretical and empirical research—including that
which is critical of the relational approach. In this respect, the goal of the
series is to explore the advantages and limits of relational sociology. The
series welcomes contributions related to various thinkers, theories, and
methods clearly associated with relational sociology (such as Bourdieu,
critical realism, Deleuze, Dewey, Elias, Latour, Luhmann, Mead, network
analysis, symbolic interactionism, Tarde, and Tilly). Multidisciplinary
studies which are relevant to relational sociology are also welcome, as well
as research on various empirical topics (such as education, family, music,
health, social inequalities, international relations, feminism, ethnicity,
environmental issues, politics, culture, violence, social movements, and
terrorism). Relational sociology—and more specifically, this series—will
contribute to change and support contemporary sociology by discussing
fundamental principles and issues within a relational framework.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15100
Risto Heiskala
Semiotic Sociology
Risto Heiskala
Faculty of Social Sciences
Tampere University
Tampere, Finland
Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology

ISBN 978-3-030-79366-1 ISBN 978-3-030-79367-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79367-8
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Acknowledgements
I extend my thanks to those whose help was vital for the publication of this
book, that is, the Fellows of the Institute for Advanced Social Research
(IASR) at Tampere University, who in our weekly seminar commented on
the drafts of the book and provided their work for me to comment on
when it was their turn to present. My gratitude is no less great to Marita
Husso, my co-author in Chap. 7 and life companion. Living with her has
taught me a myriad of things about gender and close relationships over the
years, and I dedicate this book to her. I also thank Peeter Selg, who as a
series editor and a fellow soul in social, political and semiotic theory invited
the manuscript to this series, and Marjukka Virkajärvi, the coordinator of
the IASR, which I directed from year 2008 to 2018 in the University of
Tampere and, after its merger with Tampere University of Technology,
until the end of year 2020 in the new Tampere University before its short-
sighted new management run the institute down because they mistakenly
thought that academic traditions do not matter. Over the years, Marjukka
has in her competent way guided me through an abundance of technical,
linguistic and administrative problems and did so also with this book.
It is gratefully acknowledged that part of the work required for publish-
ing this book was done with the support (and sometimes at the expense)
of the Academy of Finland project 308740, which I directed from the year
2017 to 2021.
It is also worth noting that this is a book of its own, but it also has a
history because Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8, even if rewritten for this book,
draw much of their material from the author’s previously published
v
vi Acknowledgements
articles listed below in the order of the chapters: Toward semiotic sociol-
ogy. A synthesis of semiology, semiotics and phenomenological sociology.
Social Science Information 53(2014), 1:35–53; Economy and society.
From Parsons through Habermas to semiotic institutionalism. Social
Science Information 46(2007), 2:243–271; Theorizing power. Weber,
Parsons, Foucault and neostructuralism. Social Science Information
40(2001), 2:241–264; Modernity and the intersemiotic condition. Social
Science Information 32(1993), 4:581–604; Modernity and the articula-
tion of the gender system: Order, conflict, and chaos. Semiotica 173(2009),
1/4:215–231; and From Goffman to semiotic sociology. Semiotica
124(1999), 3/4:211–234. I am grateful to the publishers, SAGE in the
first four cases and DeGruyter in the last two, who kindly granted the
permissions to use that material for this book. I am also grateful for the
insightful comments made on one or more of the chapters when they were
mere article drafts and the many corrections suggested to them by the
numerous people whom I have already thanked in the published versions
of the articles.
Praise for Semiotic Sociology
“Semiotic Sociology recalls classics of the field, such as Economy and Society by Neil
Smelser and Talcott Parsons or Pierre Bourdieu’s Logic of Practice, in its scope,
ambition, and subtle synthesis of remarkably different insights from opposed tradi-
tions of thought. Heiskala’s brilliance allows him to show how debates central to
social theory for more than 100 years look different when properly grounded in
the analysis of signification. Moving well beyond the cultural turn and debates
about “social construction,” this is a book for the 21st century, which rewrites
several vital concepts, among them power, modernity, and social structure.
Heiskala’s vision for sociology makes it a human science worthy of the name.”
—Isaac Ariail Reed, Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia, USA
“This is a wonderfully accomplished book in the tradition of grand theory. Risto

Heiskala skillfully integrates a plethora of intellectual traditions, from pragmatism
to critical theory, to propose an innovative and perspicacious account of contem-
porary societal issues, notably surrounding gender.”
—Patrick Baert, Professor of Social Theory, University of Cambridge, UK
“In Semiotic Sociology, Risto Heiskala tackles a bold and welcome synthesizing
challenge: to build bridges between theoretical approaches that have too
quickly, yet for decades, been deemed as incompatible in the mainstream socio-
logical selection of analytical tools. He makes this operation sound and seem
easy: so evident and clear are elements with which he joins together strands of
semiotics, pragmatism and phenomenology, as well as traditions that deal with
macro-sociological understandings of the society and different levels of power
theories. Yet, it is clear that these syntheses result from career-long scrutiny of
theoretical debates but also a constant, careful eye to the needs of contempo-
rary social research, a virtue not always present in theory building efforts.
Furthermore, discussing the modernity-postmodernity debate Heiskala offers a
sobering relief to all who have preferred to practice civil inattention to this
quarrel for long and felt it has not provided ways forward. Searching for such
ways, Heiskala takes two directions: the explorations of, first, gender as an illus-
tration of the consequences and means of modernization, and, secondly,
Goffman’s potential offerings to semiotic sociology, or perhaps to contempo-
rary sociology more at large. Both pursuits will certainly provide food for fruit-
ful sociological debate around the book’s proposals. For social scientists striving
to solve empirical puzzles of current societies, Semiotic Sociology offers both an
encouragement and worthy tools to confidently go the way that often works the
best: not a linear development of a theory jealous of its foundations and bound-
aries, but a synthetic, creative theorization of contemporary life.”
—Eeva Luhtakallio, Professor of Sociology, University of Helsinki,
EU Finland
Contents
1 Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology and Social Theory 1

References 7
2 Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics and Phenomenological

Sociology 9
Structuralist Semiology 10
Pragmatism 17
Phenomenological Sociology 20
Conclusion: Implications for Cultural and Social Theory 25
References 29
3 Economy and Society in Semiotic Institutionalism 33

Structural-Functionalist Economic Sociology 36
Parsons: The AGIL Scheme of the Social System 36
Economy and Society in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative
Action: System and the Lifeworld 39
What Is Wrong with Parsons and Habermas? 43
The Challenge of Institutionalism 46
Institutionalism in Economics 47
Pragmatist and Phenomenological Institutionalism 48
Towards a Synthesis: Economy and Society in Semiotic
Institutionalism 52
Semiotic Institutionalism 52
Semiotic Interpretation of the System–Lifeworld Scheme 54
ix
x Contents
Conclusion: How Does Semiotic Institutionalism Overcome the

Limitations of the Structural-Functionalist Approach? 57
References 61
4 Power and Signification in Neostructuralism 65

Conceptions of Power 66
Resource Theories: Weber and Parsons 66
The Structural Approach: Foucault 68
The Neostructuralist Approach 71
Understanding the Four Approaches as a Scale 74
Applying the Scale of Power Conceptions 74
Interpreting Everyday Conversation Neostructuralistically 74
Big Case Comparison and Dispositifs in Historical Sociology 78
The Need for Less Complex Approaches 81
Conclusion 82
References 86
5 Modernity and the Intersemiotic Condition 89

Intersemiosis: Mystery Train and Michael Jackson 89
Modernity as Institutional Tendencies 92
Culture as Semiosis 96
The Postmodernity Debate and Sociological Analysis of Culture 102
Postmodernity or Just Modernity and Intersemiotic Condition? 109
References 110
6 Modernity and the Articulation of the Gender System115

Articulation and Social Sciences 116
Gender as a Biologically Motivated Cultural System 118
Gender and Modernity: The Levels of Articulation 122
Gender and Modernity: Order, Conflict and Chaos 125
Conclusion 129
References 131
7 The Power of Institutions: The Case of Gendered Agency135

Jointly with Marita Husso
Interpreting Agency: Biology and Rational Choice 136
An Institutionalist Reinterpretation: Regulations and Path
Dependency 139
Contents xi
Bounded Rationality: Normative and Cultural-Cognitive

Institutionalism 141
Cultural Institutionalism Reinterpreted: Discursive and
Habitual Institutionalism 143
The Cumulated Scheme Applied to Gender 145
Conclusion and Future Tasks 149
References 152
8 From Goffman to Semiotic Sociology157

Framing Goffman 158
Frame 1: Dramaturgic Sociology 161
Frame 2: Micro-revolution and Co-presence 164
Frame 3: Interaction Order and Ritual 168
Frame 4: Self and Interaction Contingency 171
Frame 5: Frame Analysis and Presence 174
Goffman and Semiotic Sociology 179
References 183
9 Conclusion: Semiotic Sociology in the Field of Social

Theory187
Semiotic Sociology and Social Ontology in Current Social Theory 187
Semiotic Sociology, Institutions and the Material Turn 197
Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Marx, Freud and the Frankfurt
School 200
References 213
Author Index217
Subject Index221
About the Author
Risto Heiskala is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University, EU

Finland (Orcid id: 0000-0003-4466-7491). He is the author of Society as
Semiosis and co-editor of Policy Design in the European Union and Social
Innovations, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. He is a
member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and Vice-Chair of
the Society for the Study of Power Relations (SSPR). He has been the
Director of the Institute for Advanced Social Research (IASR) at the
University of Tampere and a member of the executive committee of the
European Sociological Association (ESA) as well as a founding member of
its Social Theory Research Network.
xiii
List of Figures and Tables
Fig. 2.1 Meaning and project in Schutz’s phenomenology (Source:

Heiskala 2003: 81) 22
Fig. 2.2 The triangle model of meaning-analysis (Source: Heiskala,
2003: 321) 26
Fig. 3.1 The AGIL scheme on the level of general systems theory 37
Fig. 3.2 The social system within a wider context of the human condition 39
Fig. 3.3 Habermas’s reformulation of the Parsonian AGIL scheme of
the social system 41
Fig. 3.4 Social semiosis as a System–Lifeworld scheme 55
Fig. 3.5 The field of social semiosis 59
Fig. 7.1 The pie model of the mutual relationships of the principles
determining human agency. Key to sectors: (1) biological
dispositions; (2) rational choice; (3) regulative institutions; (4)
normative institutions; (5) discursive institutions; (6) habitual
dispositions147
Fig. 8.1 The field of study in dramaturgic sociology 163
Fig. 8.2 The relation of phenomenology and semiotics to the sign 178
Fig. 8.3 The field of Goffman’s study 179
Fig. 8.4 The field of study in semiotic sociology 180
Fig. 9.1 Doxa and the discursive universe. (Bourdieu, 1977: 168) 190
Table 7.1 Theoretical approaches to human agency (based on Scott,

2001: 52, Gronow, 2008: 368; and the text of this chapter) 146
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology

and Social Theory
Semiotics was for some reason bypassed by the cultural current that at the
turn of the twentieth century gave birth to the three basic modern social
sciences: economics, political science and sociology. All three study ‘us’ in
the deluge called ‘modernity’ in the same way in which anthropology
studies ‘them’ in the wake of colonialism, the other side of the coin called
‘modernity’. That semiotics never became a master discipline in modern
academia is a weird thing because one would imagine that in an era that
many have for a good reason called ‘information society’, the ‘time of
communication’, or the ‘time of the sign’, there would be great demand
for a discipline studying the general patterns of signification.
In some sense, this general discipline did emerge because the time gave
birth to a great deal of semiotic conceptions, including the Saussurean
tradition of semiology in France and Europe more generally and the
Peircean tradition of semiotics in the US. Yet semiotics has always been
flooded with too many conceptions that have too often been thought to
be contradictory, as is often said about the relationship between the struc-
turalist tradition of semiology and the pragmatist tradition of semiotics.
The discipline, therefore, has not managed to be consolidated but has
been left into the state of hesitation and anomie. This book is an attempt
to construct a synthetic conception covering the pragmatist and the struc-
turalist tradition in social semiotics and extending within social theory to
the fields of phenomenological sociology and action theory as well. The
core idea is that an equation can be made between the structuralist
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
R. Heiskala, Semiotic Sociology, Palgrave Studies in Relational
Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79367-8_1
2 R. HEISKALA
conception of articulation, the pragmatist conception of interpretant and

the phenomenological conception of prereflective intentional act. The
chapters included can be no more than prolegomena, but they form a
research programme for a unified semiotic cultural theory and a social
theory building on it. That is how they lay the foundation for semiotic
sociology.
There are two basic reasons to present a book like this. First, if semiot-
ics wants to consolidate and spread as an academic discipline, it needs to
leave behind the balkanized internal wars that have characterized its his-
tory thus far. To make this happen, synthetic conceptions are needed, and
this book offers itself as one candidate for such a synthetic conception.
Second, as the great popularity of cultural studies in all social sciences
shows, there is a great need for conceptions capable of analysing significa-
tion in the social sciences. It also seems that ‘cultural studies’ left alone
without semiotics will not be capable of coming up with an adequate tool-
box for that task. The time might be ripe, therefore, for someone to pres-
ent a research programme for semiotic sociology. With this book, I
volunteer.
This book is published in a series on relational sociology. So, how is this
relational sociology? Even if relationalism has become popular as a term
only quite recently, as an approach it actually has long roots. The semiotic
theories of both Saussure and Peirce, which provide the rock bottom of
the current inquiry, are both thoroughly relational. To become convinced
of that, one only needs to think of Saussure’s definition of the sign and
Peirce’s description of the sign process or semiosis, both of which consist
of relations and relations of relations. Moreover, the constructively critical
scrutiny of other forms of social theory (phenomenological sociology,
structural functionalism and action theory in particular) in the book
emerges from their relationalism and strives for a synthetic model, which
is relational in nature. So, what better place to make such views public
than a book series on relational sociology!
The book consists of nine chapters, which can be briefly described as
follows. This chapter, ‘Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology and
Social Theory’, opens the inquiry with a project outline and an explication
of the motive of writing it.
In Chap. 2, ‘Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics and Phenomenological
Sociology’, a mediation is sought between structuralist semiology (the
Saussurean tradition), pragmatist semiotics (the Peircean tradition) and
phenomenological sociology (Husserl, Schutz, Garfinkel and Berger &
1 INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS SEMIOTIC SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL THEORY 3
Luckmann). This is a deviation from the common view that these tradi-
tions are seen as mutually exclusive alternatives and thus competitors of
each other. The net result of the synthesis is that a conception emerges
wherein action theories (rational choice, Weber etc.) are based on phe-
nomenological sociology and phenomenological sociology is based on
neostructuralist semiotics, which is a synthesis of the Saussurean and the
Peircean traditions of understanding habits of interpretation and interac-
tion. The core idea in the field of cultural theory providing the base for the
rest is that an equation can be made between the structuralist conception
of articulation, the pragmatist conception of interpretant and the phe-
nomenological conception of prereflective intentional act.
Chapter 3, ‘Economy and Society in Semiotic Institutionalism’, takes
the discussion from the terrain of cultural theory to one of the core issues
of social theory of our time. It maintains that the great transformation to
modernity made the economy the major organizing factor of the social
synthesis, thus bringing forth the issue of the economy/society relation-
ship as the central problem of modern social theory. The chapter deals
with two broad approaches to this problem: Parsons’s and Habermas’s
variants of structural functionalism, on the one hand, and the various cur-
rents of (neo)institutionalism on the other. An attempt to synthesize the
benefits of these conflicting approaches is made from the point of view of
semiotic institutionalism. What emerges is a general theoretical frame-
work, which is better equipped than the original structural functionalist
and institutionalist conceptions for the analysis of the economy/society
relationship.
Chapter 4, ‘Power and Signification in Neostructuralism’, discusses
another central topic of social theory: power. It develops a synthetic con-
ception of the topic based on Weber’s, Parsons’s and Foucault’s writings.
The aim is, first, to build a bridge between what are called resource theo-
ries of power (Weber, Parsons) and the structural approach (Foucault)
and, second, to do this in the form of a conception which would be usable
on both macro- and micro-levels at the same time. Four theories are dis-
cussed: the distributive approach (Weber), the collective approach
(Parsons), the structural approach (Foucault) and the neostructuralist
approach developed here. It is argued that these approaches can be ordered
on a scale on which the complexity of analysis increases as one gradually
moves from the first to the last and that the selection of an appropriate
level of analysis in an empirical study is a practical issue relative to the aim
of the study. The types of analyses characteristic of the more complex
4 R. HEISKALA
levels are illustrated by a discussion of the problem posed by Big Case

Comparison in historical sociology (the structural approach) and analysis
of everyday conversations (the neostructuralist approach), including a dis-
cussion on phenomenological sociology and conversation analysis.
Taken together, Chaps. 2, 3 and 4 describe the programme for semiotic
sociology presented in this book. Chapter 2 presents the cultural-
theoretical basic idea of building mediation between semiology, semiotics
and phenomenology (articulation = interpretant = intentional act), thus
forming the cultural-theoretical base for semiotic social theory and sociol-
ogy. Chapters 3 and 4 extend the programme to the core of sociology, that
is, to a macro-sociological description of society (Chap. 3) and the strat-
egy to study the division of power in society (Chap. 4). The three follow-
ing chapters then give two examples of the way in which the programme
can be applied, Chap. 5 in covering the modernity/postmodernity debate
from the semiotic perspective and Chaps. 6 and 7 by way of presenting an
interpretation of the changing orders of gender. Finally, Chap. 8 discusses
micro-sociology. Focusing on Erwing Goffman’s work, it shows how the
semiotic approach can improve analyses of signification also in the field of
micro-sociology. Chapter 9 then closes by situating semiotic sociology
into the more general field of social theory and by discussing the possible
strategies of social criticism.
To be more specific, Chap. 5, ‘Modernity and the Intersemiotic
Condition’, is a semiotic account of the early postmodernity debate. It
makes a distinction between modernity as a process of institutional trans-
formation of the structure of society at large, which, once emerged, is a
relatively constant factor, and postmodernism as a cultural style, which is
characterized by ambivalence and celebrates it. The chapter also shows
that what has been called ‘postmodern condition’ is not something unique
but has been faced many times in history whenever heterogeneous popu-
lations have gathered in urban centres and cultural messages from several
sources have mixed and brought up ‘cultural chiasms’. The chapter pro-
poses intersemiotic condition to be used as an analytic term under which
the analysis of such cultural phenomena can proceed.1
Chapter 6, ‘Modernity and the Articulation of the Gender System’,
takes us to the field of gender. Its point of departure is that gender system
can be understood as a cultural system rooted in biological differences.
Semiotically speaking, it is a binary sign system (male: female) with some
variation involved (transsexuals and the whole LBGTQIA+ rainbow). In
the process of modernity, the biological motivation of the gender system
is being loosened by technological innovations such as contraception and

mother’s milk substitute. At the same time, the state has replaced family
and kin as the organizing structure of society and the cultural ideal of
equality has gained a strong position. These and similar changes together
have made gender flow in ‘post-traditional’ societies. The chapter deals
with this process, paying attention to the three theoretically possible con-
stellations in the determination of semiotic identities in the social process:
functional order in the Parsonian sense, formation of struggling parties in
the sense of Weber and Bourdieu, and anomie in the sense of Durkheim
and Berger & Luckmann. It turns out that elements of all of these three
theoretical constellations are present in the current transformation of the
gender system. This is elaborated with empirical material drawn from the
change of the Finnish gender system from the 1950s onwards.
While Chap. 6 discusses what is happening to gender in modernity,
Chap. 7, ‘The Power of Institutions: The Case of Gendered Agency’, co-
authored with Marita Husso, takes us to the methodology of its study. It
opens with a scrutiny of the simplest versions of the interpretation of
agency, which rely on biological dispositions, often supplemented with
rational choice explanations. The chapter shows that better explanations
can be reached if biological and rational choice explanations are supple-
mented with different forms of institutionalism. These have been distin-
guished into regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive institutionalism,
and later on, the last one of these has been further divided into discursive
and habitual institutionalism. The chapter applies the distinction between
the aforementioned six explanatory strategies to the analysis of gendered
agency. Here the interest is, first, to develop a synthetic conception in
which explanatory strategies complement each other, and second, to
reduce the binarity of the nature: culture debate. The third task is to start
applying the conception to other mechanisms of differentiation, such as
age, ethnicity/race and social class, which again can be linked back to the
study of gender along the ideas presented in the debate on
intersectionality.
Chapter 8, ‘From Goffman to Semiotic Sociology’, is a tribute to a
great sociologist and draws its material from his work, but it is also a
demarcation between the semiotic and the phenomenological approaches
to signification. It starts from the commonplace that even if Erwing
Goffman was an influential micro-sociologist, his work is not easy to clas-
sify. The chapter therefore interprets different aspects of Goffman’s work
in applying his own frame analysis to it and discusses five different ways to
6 R. HEISKALA
frame Goffman. The frames are dramaturgical sociology; micro-revolution

and the rise of the study of co-presence in sociology; interaction order and
ritual; self as a necessary illusion and the contingency of interaction; and,
finally, frame analysis and the problem of presence. It turns out that all
these framings reveal important features of Goffman’s work and open up
fruitful paths for social research. Yet it is also shown that even if Goffman
spoke a great deal about signs, his understanding of signification was pre-
semiotic in the sense that in his analyses, the vital question is always the
subject’s relationship to a present sign. To escape such ‘metaphysics of
presence’, his conceptions should be opened up for analysis of the rela-
tionship of present signs, not only to the subject and other signs present
but also to absent signs. Such a change would bring this important prede-
cessor of semiotic sociology genuinely to its ground. That again would
make it easier to link the field of micro-sociology to that of macro-
sociology, that is, to make the mediation that Goffman himself was both
reluctant and unable to do.
The closing Chap. 9, ‘Conclusion: Semiotic Sociology in the Field of
Social Theory’, explicates where semiotic sociology stands in regard to
social ontology and how it is a contribution to current social theory. It also
includes a brief comment on the constructionism/material turn debate.
The chapter closes with a section on the hermeneutics of suspicion and a
discussion on alternative strategies to justify social criticism.
That will be the structure of the programme to be presented in the
forthcoming chapters. For those who will find it interesting and worth
studying further, it might be good to know that this book is part of a theo-
retical project that I also pursue in my Society as Semiosis (Heiskala, 2003)
and the two books supplement each other. Thus, in addition to some
repetition, the reader of both books will find that some of the questions
evoked in one book are answered in the other, although the reader will
also find out that, even taken together, the two books are no more than a
prolegomenon for something that will hopefully grow up to a blossoming
discipline in the future.
Note
1. Originally, this part of the book was planned to consist of two chapters.
However, for copyright reasons transcending the understanding of an ordi-
nary professor, the other one, titled Modernity, Postmodernity and Reflexive
Modernization, had to be left out of the book because its earlier version was
published as a journal article with a very restrictive publication rights con-

tract (Heiskala, 2011). For the information of those readers who may be
interested in it, here is the outline of the article, which starts from the fact
that in the sociological tradition, modernization has usually been under-
stood as increasing differentiation. Theorists as different as Marx, Durkheim,
Weber and Parsons all shared the view that modernization meant the open-
ing of new horizons. The publication of Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
transformed the discursive universe: contrary to the tradition of
differentiation-theoretical sociology, the pamphlet interpreted moderniza-
tion as a process in which the plurality of local cultural traditions was
destroyed and their various narratives were rearticulated into a unified mod-
ern canon under the repressive metanarratives of science, progress and the
Enlightenment. At first, sociologists were at odds with this new interpreta-
tion until Beck, Giddens and Lash brought up the idea of modernity in two
phases in their Reflexive Modernization and related publications. According
to them, ‘traditional modernity’ was based on cultural closures, such as uni-
fied class-identities, nationalities and fixed gender identities, but it was fol-
lowed by a ‘second’ or ‘reflexive modernity’, where several traditions lived
side by side, just as the postmodernists claimed. An intense debate emerged.
In addition to describing the debate, the chapter asks: did we learn anything
from the debate on reflexive modernization and, if so, can the lessons learnt
be used fruitfully in the study of contemporary society? The answer seems to
be negative for the most part. However, the modernization-theoretical
approach can still be seen as a useful tool for framing research questions and
contributing to the diagnosis of the era. This is how it can still provide a
point of departure for research but not deliver all the answers, which is the
task of empirical social research rather than abstract theoretical schemes of
orientation.
References
Heiskala, R. (2003). Society as Semiosis. Neostructuralist Theory of Culture and
Society. Peter Lang.
Heiskala, R. (2011). From Modernity Through Postmodernity to Reflexive
Modernization. Did We Learn Anything? International Review of Sociology,
21(1), 3–19.
CHAPTER 2
Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics

and Phenomenological Sociology
The most common way to understand the relationship between structur-

alist semiology, pragmatist semiotics and phenomenological sociology is
to conceive them as mutually exclusive alternatives. This view sees each of
them as a bunker into which theoreticians can dig and from which they
can fire on the occupants of the other two bunkers. Going against the
custom of the field, I depart from the bunker model and try to synthesize
the three approaches.
In the following section, I start from a version of structuralism which
can be called structuralist code theory and try to expand its horizon of
study using the criticisms made of it. The result is a way of reading the
classic of structuralist semiology, Saussure (1974, 1983 [1916]), which
can be called neostructuralist. Neostructuralist semiology pays attention
to the flowing nature of meanings but does not have the conceptual tools
to give an exact description of the flow and must therefore be supple-
mented by Peirce’s (1931–1966, 1992, 1998) pragmatist semiotics. To
make this possible, an isomorphic relation must be developed between
Peirce’s and Saussure’s analyses of the sign. This is done in the next sec-
tion, where Peirce’s analysis of the object-relation of the sign is also used
as a way of introducing an understanding of the motivated nature of the
sign into neostructuralism, which makes it possible to surpass the Cartesian
dualism between nature and culture, the besetting sin of the structuralist
tradition. Neither Saussure nor Peirce gives us a definitive answer to the
question of where exactly signs and structures of meaning take place. A

Switzerland AG 2021
10 R. HEISKALA
section of its own approaches this issue from the point of view of Schutz’s
(1982 [1932]) mundane phenomenology. From this point of departure,
articulation of the Saussurean sign and the interpretant of the Peircean
sign can be understood as Husserl’s (1982 [1931]) intentional act. This
enables social theory to go beyond the usual sociological dualism between
culture and the institutional structure of society because institutions, fol-
lowing Berger and Luckmann (1966), can be understood as specific pat-
terns of the organization of people’s habits and everyday knowledge.
Finally, the concluding section discusses the problems the synthetic pro-
gramme raises in cultural and social theory as well as the question of the
appropriate area of application of different theoretical approaches.
Structuralist Semiology
Following Saussure, structuralist semiology understands the sign as the
result of an interrelated articulation of two parallel orders. These are the
order of signifiers, or the material bearers of meaning, on the one hand,
and the order of signifieds, concepts, associations or meanings, on the
other. It is through this process, in which these two parallel orders are
articulated together, that the cultural structure, which makes it possible to
communicate with signs, emerges.
In both of these orders, the identity of the parts of the sign is formed
through the play of differences. This means that the identity of the sign
consists in being what the other signs are not: ‘In a language there are only
differences, and no positive terms’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 166, original
emphasis). This makes language work as a purely arbitrary system of signs
in which signifiers, on the one hand, and signifieds, on the other, get their
identity as relative values. The play of differences is not boundless, how-
ever: ‘To say that in a language everything is negative holds only for the
signified and the signifier considered separately. The moment we consider
the sign as a whole, we encounter something which is positive in its own
domain’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 166). And ‘everything having to do
with languages as systems needs to be approached … with a view to exam-
ining the limitations of arbitrariness’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 182).1 In
other words, the play of differences is congealed, and the negatively deter-
mined identities are replaced by oppositions with a positivity of their own
when the orders of signifiers and signifieds are articulated together. At this
level, a language is a social fact, which enables communication because
every signifier transmits a signified that is shared by a linguistic community.2
2 SYNTHESIS OF SEMIOLOGY, SEMIOTICS AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL… 11
Saussure differentiated two types of relation that determine the identity

of the sign. Associative relations determine the sign through their absence.
In the sentence a man used a fork, the sign a man gets its identity because
of the fact that it is not the sign a woman or a child. In a similar vein, the
sign a fork gets its associative identity because it is not the sign a spoon, a
knife, an axe, a mobile telephone or to dance. Associative relations are com-
plex. In such a relation ‘any given term acts as the centre of a constellation,
from which connected terms radiate ad infinitum’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]:
174). Syntagmatic relations, for their part, determine the identity of the
sign through their presence. They are signs with which the sign can com-
bine so as to make a chain of signs interpretable as a meaningful syntagma.
In the aforementioned example, the identity of the sign a man is syntag-
matically determined by the signs used and a fork. The possibility of com-
municating in speech (parole) makes it necessary to generate syntagmatic
chains of signs. In addition to this, Saussure thought that syntagmatic
relations contribute to the determination of the identity of the sign on the
level of linguistic structure (langue). Yet it is not clear how exactly he
understood this. In what follows I will argue for an extensive interpreta-
tion according to which all those syntagmatic chains contribute to the
identity of the sign, in which the sign can be placed so that the chain is
understood as a meaningful communicative act in a cultural realm.
Combined with the aforementioned definition of associative relation, this
definition of syntagmatic relation leads to a broad concept of structure.3
Saussure was a linguist of spoken natural language, and by ‘order of
signifiers’, he meant order of phonemes. He thought, however, that follow-
ing the pattern of linguistics of spoken language facilitated studying other
systems of signs such as ‘writing, the deaf- and-dumb alphabet, symbolic
rites, forms of politeness, military signals, and so on’ (Saussure, 1983
[1916]: 33). He referred to this field of study as sémiologie, which he
understood as a science ‘which studies the role of signs as part of social
life’ and investigates ‘the nature of signs and the laws governing them’
(Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 33). In speech, the signs are completely arbitrary.
Language is the most complex of all systems of expression and has been
studied extensively. It is for these reasons that ‘linguistics serves as a model
[patron général] for the whole of semiology, even though languages rep-
resent only one type of semiological system’ (Saussure, 1983 [1916]:
101). And it is because of these and similar statements that Saussure can
be seen as the founding father of semiology. At the same time, however, it
is important to know that Saussure himself did not proceed any further
12 R. HEISKALA
towards the field of semiological study. This was left for other scholars,
such as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and A.J. Greimas.
Saussure’s followers expanded his programmatic statements on semiol-
ogy to an actual corpus of semiological study. In doing this, however, they
also articulated his statements on language and cultural systems of mean-
ing into a new form, which I call ‘structuralist code theory’. What spread
all over the Western world in the 1960s and 1970s was this form of struc-
turalist semiology, developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s and influ-
enced by the writings of other linguists in addition to Saussure such as
Roman Jakobson and Louis Hjelmslev. In what follows, I build up an ideal
type of structuralist code theory consisting of seven theoretical commit-
ments. I by no means make the claim that all French semiologists would
have approved of all seven. What I do claim, however, is that every one of
the seven commitments was part of one or more influential interpretations
of structuralist semiology and that criticism of the structuralist programme
has found its target primarily if not exclusively in them. This is essential
because, as I argue later, it is possible to outline a form of structuralism
which breaks loose from all of the seven commitments and yet is based on
the Saussurean programme.
The seven commitments of structuralist code theory are the following:
1. Structures are understood to be closed codes. They work like the

oil-pressure gauge in a car, which selects the difference between
‘empty’ and ‘full’, but ignores other states such as ‘half full’ and
‘nearly empty’. The subjects thus are completely tied to the structure
in their action. All messages that can be transferred are already
included in the code, and ‘before the transmission has even begun,
the receiver already knows everything that it is possible to say. The
only thing he does not know is what, in fact, will be said’ (Descombes,
1979: 93–94).
2. Associative relations are reinterpreted as paradigmatic relations,
which have a finite number of elements (Barthes, 1994 [1964]: 59).
3. Syntagmatic relations are excluded from the structure and incorpo-
rated into the domain of realization taking place in discourse, that is,
speech (Barthes, 1994 [1964]: 59–60).
4. Relations between the elements of structure are binary (Greimas &
Rastier, 1968; Lévi-Strauss, 1963 [1958]).
5. Relations between the elements of structure are not only binary but
also hierarchical, in the sense that one term is the default value and
the other a derivative member of the opposition. This idea is based

on Roman Jakobson’s axiomatization of phonology. Jakobson him-
self made attempts to expand the hierarchical pattern to higher levels
of linguistic study (where the route to be followed naturally is pho-
nology—morphology—syntax—semantics—pragmatics), and an
extreme version can be found in the way Derrida takes this interpre-
tation of the nature of cultural differences as an unquestioned point
of departure which makes deconstructive criticism possible and nec-
essary (e.g. Derrida, 1973 [1967], 1981 [1972]).
6. The structures are unconscious. An anthropological version of this
commitment is Lévi-Strauss’s (1963 [1958]) interpretation of a set of
actual myths from different cultures as evidence of the existence of a
more general mythological structure which binds the myth-tellers and
their audience, but is not known by them, even if a sophisticated
anthropologist is able to recognize it. A psychoanalytical version is
Lacan (1977 [1966]) who, to begin with, turned the Saussurean
description of the sign upside down in writing the signifier above and
the signified under the bar, separating them in the pictorial representa-
tion of the sign. Second, he interpreted the task of psychoanalysis as
studying the bar that separates the signifier and the signified. Third,
what Lacan understands by the signifier is what Saussure understood
as the entire linguistic system and all other semiological systems. For
Lacan, then, the signified is identical with the unconscious, and it is
this reinterpretation of the Saussurean terms which makes it possible
to reformulate Freud’s psychoanalytical discourse into a semiologi-
cally oriented, Lacanian psychoanalytical discourse dealing with ‘the
discontents of civilization’ (Freud, 2010 [1930]).
7. The structures are universal. A philosophically and anthropologically
justified version of this commitment was made in Lévi-Strauss’s
(1963 [1958]) mythological studies, enabling him to join to the
classical tradition of the search for anthropological constants. An
anthropologically and linguistically justified version was presented
by Chomsky (1964; see also Lyons, 1970), for whom the linguistic
faculty of mankind is based on the physiological characteristics of the
human brain, even though different languages make use of the pos-
sibilities offered in somewhat different ways. Chomsky’s theoretical
background is, of course, different from that of the French structur-
alists, but ideas drawn from his transformational linguistics were
often involved in the North American reception of French structur-
alism. He is thus a relevant figure in this context.
14 R. HEISKALA
A form of structuralism that makes these commitments, as well as most

forms of structuralism which make even some of them, runs into problems
with at least two issues. First, it is unable to answer the question of how
the structure changes. Second, it is incapable of dealing with the situation-
ally creative use of coded meanings (e.g. see Sperber & Willson, 1986).
This does not make them useless in empirical research, but it does make
them unsuitable descriptions of the ontology of culture and society.4 In
what follows I outline a version of structuralism that is more fruitful in this
sense. I call it ‘neostructuralism’ and proceed now to the seven commit-
ments of the structuralist code theory in spelling out neostructuralist
responses to the ‘seven deadly sins’ of the code theory.
1. There are (relatively) closed codes in semiosis, such as the system of

phonemes, traffic signs or military ranks, but this is a special case
rather than the rule. The entire culture itself as a huge structured
and structuring system of meaning is in a constant flux of articula-
tion. Derrida’s term différance refers to this flux but is not a new
invention. Instead, it refers to the same set of problems that con-
cerned Saussure when he discussed the emergence of the sign in the
process of articulation of the signifier and the signified (1983
[1916]: 156). The moment of articulation is exactly the point at
which the play of differences transforms, through the process of
limitation, into the linguistic or semiological structure as a social fact
(e.g. see: Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 166–167, 182). This social fact is
not a solid and closed code without change, however, but a process
of structuration or articulation and rearticulation.
2. Linguistic tradition after Saussure shows that many French semiolo-
gists and their followers interpreted associative relations as finite and
clear-cut paradigms. Saussure, however, never said anything of the
kind. He explicitly understood associative relations as infinite and
radiating in several directions from any given term in a way that pro-
duced a situationally varying network in constant flux.
3. As hinted earlier, it is possible to interpret the concept of structure
so that syntagmatic as well as associative relations contribute to it.
Moreover, this can be done following the broad interpretation
according to which it is not just those other signs that the sign is
actually chained with which contribute to its identity, but all those
syntagmatic chains of signs in which it could be placed, so that the
chain is understood as a meaningful communicative act.5
4. Binary relations may be considered an important type of relation in

cultural semiosis, but there is no reason to believe that all relations
are binary. Peirce, for instance, interprets the sign relation as triadic.
In the next section, I try to show that this conception of the sign
relation can, without any major alteration, be understood as a
description of the articulation of the elements of structure—a line of
interpretation with the side effect of implying the introduction of
the structuralist idea of the play of differences into Peircean semiotics.
5. The question of the nature of the elements of the structure is a con-
tingent issue, and this makes empirical research in different contexts
necessary. It is obvious that there are hierarchical differences in cul-
ture (e.g. military ranks). It is also obvious that there are systems of
differences that are partly hierarchical (the gender system, e.g., the
erosion of which has been progressing so that women have adopted
positions and qualities formerly associated with the identity of men
only). However, there are also systems of differences which are not
hierarchical at all (e.g. the points of the compass) or are partly hier-
archical and partly not (e.g. the gender system, again).
6. While there may be unconscious structures, there is no need for a
structure to be unconscious, and a great many (most?) of the struc-
tures studied by social scientists and semiologists are either com-
pletely or predominantly within the reach of the actors’ conscious or
preconscious reflection. In this case, the scholar’s contribution is pri-
marily in his or her extensive and explicit codification of the system.
Because of this extensiveness and explicitness, the scholar’s results
may be enlightening for the actors even in cases where there is, in the
codification of the structure, not a single surprising statement as long
as each is taken separately (e.g. see Schneider, 1980 [1968]).
7. There are universal structures, and there are universal dimensions in
many structures. The human sound system and auditory sense, for
example, are formed in such a way that our ability to produce and
recognize sounds is limited. Therefore, the sound system can only
exist within naturally given limits. It is well known that Chomsky has
made much more far-reaching claims about the universality of the
human linguistic faculty. I do not have competency to evaluate the
validity of these statements, but as a matter of principle, there is no
sense in denying that we are corporeal beings and live in an environ-
ment which is but partly culturally structured. For this reason, there
are some universal dimensions in every cultural system; that is,
16 R. HEISKALA
instead of being completely arbitrary, the signs are biologically moti-

vated to a certain extent (a point to be taken up again later).
However, there are two specifications to be made. First, since our
growing technological capacity makes it possible for us to transform
the motivated nature of signs (up to a limit) the characteristics of
which have been naturally given, currently existing limits for the
variation of cultural systems may not obtain in the future. If we take
the progressive transformation in today’s gender system as an exam-
ple, we can say that the development of contraceptive methods and
substitutes for mother’s milk have already brought significant
changes; further, the prospects for more and more thorough sex-
change operations, genetic manipulation and baby-farming in labo-
ratories set the stage for a society in which the biological motivation
of the signs of the gender system will be dissolved, step by step, in
the future (for more on this see Chaps. 5 and 6). Second, even if we
admit that there are universal dimensions in structures and that their
study may be fruitful, the social scientist or researcher into culture is
usually interested in processes and structures that vary over time and
place. In the study of these spatially and temporally limited struc-
tures, Saussure’s idea of linguistics as the commander-in-chief of
semiological study implies a methodological point of departure that
would involve the researcher in describing the structure as a system
of arbitrary signs. Information about biological or other kinds of
motivation, if necessary for a valid description of the structure, can
enter the research process in later phases.
The seven alternative solutions outlined above give a preliminary

description of neostructuralism as a variant of structuralism that is differ-
ent from the structuralist code theory and that is immune to the criticisms
that are fatal to the latter. The informed reader will recognize that many
of these points have already been made in debates about what is often
called ‘post-structuralism’. The reason I prefer the term neostructuralism
is two-fold. First, it is possible to write critical theory from the neostruc-
turalist point of view, but there is no necessary reason why neostructuralist
analysis of culture and society should be critical. Here it differs from post-
structuralism, which has its substratum in different versions of critical
theory. Second, the term post-structuralism is misleading. What post-
structuralism comes after is not Saussure’s structuralism but after structur-
alist code theory, which is only one possible reinterpretation of Saussure’s
theory. But there are others, and ideas usually said to be post-structuralist
often direct us to problems already present in Saussure. A reminder of this

is the fact that the aforementioned outline of an up-to-date version of
structuralism is in many respects compatible with the careful close reading
of Saussure made by historian of linguistics Roy Harris (1987), even if
there are differences in detail and area of application. It is thus better to
refer to this and similar reinterpretations of structuralism as neostructural-
ism, a term originally coined by Manfred Frank (1989 [1984]). In the
next section, I extend the description of neostructuralism by means of an
attempt at synthesis.
Pragmatism
The founding father of American pragmatist semiotics was C.S. Peirce. It
is commonly believed that his semiotic theory of signs is incompatible
with that outlined by Saussure. Here I try to show that their theories of
signs can be made commensurable with and complementary to each other.
Of course, this is not the only possible point of view from which these
theories can be approached, but I believe that it is the most fruitful one.
Semiology needs this cooperation for at least three reasons. First, Saussure’s
term articulation and Derrida’s term différance locate a central problem
for study, but neither of them describes the problem adequately. Peirce’s
theory of ‘interpretants’ is useful here. Second, and related to the first
point, to see the structure as a process, which is in a constant flux of articu-
lation and rearticulation, is a fruitful point of departure, but it too is left
insufficiently determined in structuralism. Peirce’s ideas about constant
semiosis can be helpful here. Third, Peirce’s studies in the object-relation
of the sign help to map the field of problems surrounding the arbitrariness
and motivation of the sign, which has traditionally been the weak point of
structuralism. What Peircean semiotics receives in turn for its conceptual
arsenal in this synthesis is the core idea of structuralism that the identity of
the sign is determined through the play of differences. I will call the syn-
thesis of these approaches ‘neostructuralist semiotics’, thus taking one
term from each tradition. An alternative term, designating the same prin-
ciple, would be semiological pragmatism, but to avoid unnecessary com-
plexity, I will use the former term exclusively.
It is commonly said that Peirce’s and Saussure’s definitions of the sign
differ from each other on this basis: Peirce’s triadic definition of the sign
involves the object-relation of the sign (object), the physical part of the
sign (representamen or sign) and its interpretation (interpretant). By
18 R. HEISKALA
contrast, Saussure presents a two-fold conceptual split of the sign into

signifier and signified, leaving no place for referential relations. In what
follows I offer a neostructuralist conception according to which the
Saussurean sign is triadic in a way resembling the Peircean sign. This is so
because the articulation of the signifier and the signified can be interpreted
as forming the third component of the sign. Moreover, an isomorphic
relation between the Saussurean and the Peircean sign can be presented,
such that the signifier = representamen, the signified = object, and the
articulation of signifier and signified = interpretant.
The core of this proposal for synthesis is the identification of articula-
tion with the interpretant. Before turning to this idea, however, I deal
with the other parts of the isomorphic relationship. The identification of
the signifier and the representamen hardly raises objections, but the iden-
tification of the signified with the object-relation may be found less obvi-
ous. Hence, two specifications are necessary. To begin with, most readings
of Peirce have put emphasis on his theory of arguments or scientific semio-
sis and, in addition to this, taken natural sciences as the paradigmatic
model of science (e.g. Apel, 1981 [1967]; Hookway, 1985). There is
nothing wrong in this, since Peirce himself also saw this part of his work
as important. Still, his merits in this field should not obscure the fact that
the scope of the theory of semiosis is much broader than that of the theory
of science. In this broader field, Peirce very often worked with a concep-
tion of semiosis in which the object of the sign was not a referent external
to semiosis but a representation within it. Thus, he could make claims
such as ‘the object of representation can be nothing but a representation’
(1931–1966, 1: 339). In this more general semiotic field of culture, the
object is identical with the Saussurean signified. In other words, it is a
construction that stabilizes in the process of culture. There is use for the
natural scientific conception of object in the human sciences, but the more
general semiotic conception is even more important because in every soci-
ety many central entities emerge that are institutions and thus have an
existence and influence only in semiosis.
Peirce’s semiotic objects were thus not always material entities such as
objects of natural scientific arguments. For him semiosis was the way cul-
ture happens, and in this broader field of semiotic study, his understanding
of the object came close to the way Saussure understood the signified.
Peirce’s theory can therefore be interpreted from a Saussurean point of
view. At the same time, however, it seems to me that we should proceed
also in the reverse order. Saussure did not go very far in developing the
theme of arbitrariness versus motivation. An extreme interpretation of his

stand leads to the Cartesian dualism between nature and culture, which is
still a prevalent interpretation today. An alternative interpretation pays
attention to his discussion of the physiological structure of the human
body (sound system and auditory sense). The latter makes it impossible
for the forms of spoken language to vary without limits since our ability to
produce and hear sounds is itself limited. If we proceed in this latter direc-
tion, we see that Peirce advanced much further in his discussion of the
object-relation of the sign than did Saussure. In his theory of arguments,
Peirce thought that referential objects external to semiosis can motivate
the interpretations they receive in semiosis. This is how he presented a
conception which is constructionist and materialistic at the same time: our
interpretations of natural phenomena are our constructions, but we are
not free to formulate these constructions as we please because the objects
are not completely malleable in relation to our interpretations of them. As
is well known, Peirce made a more specific division into iconic, indexical
and symbolic aspects of the object-relation of the sign. The symbolic
aspect equates to the completely arbitrary characteristics of the sign, but
every sign also has iconic and indexical aspects. Different aspects dominate
in different signs, but all three subsist in every sign. Adaptation of this line
of thought to structuralism does not make semiology less effective. This is
especially true if we follow Saussure and consider the arbitrary linguistic
sign as the point of departure to which all other systems of signs are com-
pared, and if we introduce information about the motivated nature of
signs only in cases where there is a need to do so. In such cases, however,
the Peircean method supplies the structuralist tradition with tools it has
lacked until now.
We have now discussed two of the three apexes of the isomorphic tri-
angle, that is, the equations ‘signifier = representamen’ and ‘signified =
object’. Now it is time to focus on the core of the issue, which is how the
‘articulation = interpretant’ equation enriches both the structuralist and
the pragmatist traditions. In spite of all post- and neo-structuralist aspira-
tions, the structuralist tradition remains a static way of describing culture.
Associative relations refer to the structure and, on the above interpreta-
tion, so do syntagmatic relations. What, then, refers to motion and change?
The neostructuralist answer is: articulations, which can be understood as a
temporal flow of the chain of Peircean interpretants. This is to say that the
way the neostructuralist structure is in a constant process of articulation
and rearticulation can be understood as Peircean semiosis. The reverse
20 R. HEISKALA
side of this interpretation of Peircean semiosis is that, in the light of the

structuralist tradition, it must be seen as a process in which signs do not
just ‘grow’, but they ‘grow’ in such a way that in every interpretation the
whole meaning-structure is rearticulated though the associative and syn-
tagmatic relations determining the identity of the sign. This is how we get
the most general possible description of semiosis as a process in which
culture as a structure of sign-relations is constantly rearticulated in the
flow of interpretants.
But what are interpretants and articulations, and where do they take
place? To make my position on this issue clear, I next spend some time on
a discussion of the conceptual toolbox of phenomenological sociology,
even if it is not possible to accept the phenomenological view either with-
out reformulation.
Phenomenological Sociology
Edmund Husserl (1982 [1931]) and in his wake Alfred Schutz (1982
[1932]) defined meaning starting from the idea of an intentional act of
consciousness, which they understood as the basic form of human experi-
ence. The phenomenologists did not, however, think that all intentional
acts of consciousness are meaningful. Says Schutz, ‘Meaning does not lie
in the experience. Rather, those experiences are meaningful which are
grasped reflectively. The meaning is the way in which the Ego regards its
experience. The meaning lies in the attitude of the Ego toward that part
of its stream of consciousness which has already flowed by, toward its
“elapsed duration”’(1982 [1932]: 69–70, original emphasis). Later, he
specified that meaning is ‘the result of an interpretation of a past experi-
ence looked at from the present Now with a reflective attitude’ (Schutz,
1976a [1945]: 210).
For phenomenologists, then, life is an infinite temporal flow of experi-
ence (Erlebnis). This flow takes place in the form of a set of successive acts
in which the attention of consciousness becomes attached to one and then
another object. But an intentional act taken separately is not yet a mean-
ing. It is made meaningful by another, succeeding intentional act, which
has the previous intentional act as its object. This is how meaning emerges
in everyday life. For Husserl, however, who was a philosopher of science
in the Kantian sense, the ‘natural attitude’ of everyday life was only a point
of departure from which he wanted to move, by means of ‘phenomeno-
logical reduction’ or ‘bracketing’ of the natural attitude, to the plane of
‘transcendental phenomenology’. The aim of transcendental phenome-

nology was to justify the intersubjective validity or universal nature of
mathematics and theoretical natural sciences from the phenomenological
point of view. The challenge in carrying this out was the phenomenologi-
cal clause that the philosopher should proceed in his/her argument in
such a way that nothing can be taken as given other than such phenomena
which appear to the consciousness in the form of intentional acts. After
bracketing the natural attitude of mundane life, this point of departure,
characterized by Husserl himself as radically ‘solipsistic’ (1982 [1931]:
30), led to problems so great in the attempt to ground the intersubjective
validity of knowledge that, even if Husserl himself thought that he had
managed to solve the puzzle, others have argued that what he managed to
establish, at most, was that one consciousness is able to have an idea of
another consciousness (Hammond et al., 1991: 222).
This is bad news and means more work for transcendental phenome-
nologists, but there is no need for us to stop here. This is so because
Schutz established the possibility of phenomenological sociology by liber-
ating the phenomenological approach from Husserl’s orientation to the
Kantian critique of pure reason, and by concentrating instead of the phi-
losophy of science and transcendental phenomenology in the phenome-
nology of mundane life and the natural attitude of everyday knowledge. In
this sphere, the existence of the Alter is not a problem, since intersubjec-
tivity and validity of knowledge are taken for granted so long as action
based on these assumptions does not run into a crisis.6 Still, this is but one
half of the foundation of phenomenological sociology. Another move
made by Schutz was to introduce social-scientific problems and social the-
ory into the phenomenological frame of reference by integrating it with
Max Weber’s (1968 [1922]) action-theoretical approach. He was able to
do this by directing attention to a specific class of intentional acts, which
had not aroused Husserl’s interest, since the latter was oriented to the
philosophy of science. Schutz termed this class projects. For Schutz, a proj-
ect is an anticipated chain of actions, which is in an intentional act of con-
sciousness ‘thought in the future perfect tense (modo futuri exacti)’ (1982
[1932]: 61). A project is, then, an intentional act directed to the future as
an anticipated action. In Fig. 2.1, I provide graphical representations for
Schutz’s definitions of meaning and project (as a specific type of meaning).
Schutz was the founding father of phenomenological sociology, but all
his work was rather abstract and almost exclusively oriented to the justifi-
cation of its philosophical and methodological foundation (for more on
22 R. HEISKALA
(a) Interpretation of meaning as a reflective intentional act (directed in point

t 2to the Ego’s intentional act in point t1)
X X X X
t0 t1 t2 t3
(b) Project as a reflective intentional act (directed in point t 1to the Ego’s
intentional act in point t 2)
X X X X
t0 t1 t2 t3
Fig. 2.1 Meaning and project in Schutz’s phenomenology (Source: Heiskala

2003: 81)
Schutz, see Heiskala, 2011). Because his seminal work, Der sinnhafte
Aufbau der sozialen Welt (1982 [1932]), was not translated into English
until the 1970s (under the title The Phenomenology of the Social World), it
was Schutz’s fate to achieve fame through his students.7 In this respect,
two books published in the US in the latter half of the 1960s were espe-
cially important. Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (1984
[1967]) followed the Husserlian rather than the Weberian root of phe-
nomenological sociology but tried to transform the phenomenology of
everyday life into an empirical study, the most vital tradition of which is
today constituted by conversation analysis (Heritage, 1984). Peter
L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality
(1966), in turn, followed the Weberian line, which it complemented with
G.H. Mead’s (1934) socialization theory. This was how they created a
phenomenologically based social theory. This was not easy to figure out,
however, as the subtitle of the book was ‘a treatise in the sociology of
knowledge’. Nonetheless, their definition of knowledge covered the whole
sphere of everyday knowledge, and they set out to establish gradually,
starting from everyday knowledge and habitualized behaviour, a concep-
tion of the totality of social institutions and their legitimation. They
defined an ‘institution’ as a form of habitualized behaviour in which the

kinds of actors and typical action schemes are reciprocally typified, and
‘legitimation’ as the discursive justification of an institution (e.g. as con-
cerns its history of birth or function). These definitions benefitted social
theory by making it unnecessary to draw a sharp line of demarcation
between the cultural interpretations of meaning, on the one hand, and the
institutional structure of society, on the other, and then to ask which
determines which.8 Instead, the route from interpretations of meaning to
the facts of social structure was a continuum, wherein the relations of
interdependence and determination of different elements can vary in con-
tingent ways at different points in time.
In addition to its benefits, there are problems involved in the phenom-
enological tradition. The most important of these is already present in the
subtitle of Berger and Luckmann’s book. Why must a study in social the-
ory be a ‘treatise in the sociology of knowledge’? The answer is included
in the way phenomenological sociology defines meaning as a reflective
intentional act. It is for this reason that Berger and Luckmann understand
the study of everyday ‘knowledge’ as the basic level of cultural sociology;
the basic concept of ethnomethodology is an accounting of the meaning
of events immediately preceding the account; and, according to Schutz’s
definition of meaning, the latter is not an intentional act but the reflective
intentional act succeeding it. Compared to the theory of action, which
deals only with means-and-ends chains, these definitions make it possible
for the social scientist to expand considerably the area of the study of soci-
ety. Yet they exclude those dimensions of culture that affect the actors but
that escape their conscious reflection. In Peirce’s terms (1931–1966, 5:
480), we can say that, in the continuum habit—belief—veritable belief,
the way Berger and Luckmann alter the focus of the sociology of knowl-
edge is by a transition from the category of ‘veritable belief’ to the cate-
gory of ‘belief’; but their concept of ‘habit’ is also defined at that level,
and is unable to push to the more fundamental level of the Peircean notion
of habit. This is the case with habits of interpretation as well as with other
habits. As far as structuralism is concerned, we could also say that phe-
nomenological sociology is not able to approach all articulations of mean-
ing.9 What conclusion should we draw from this?
One possibility is to conclude that phenomenological sociology pro-
vides the social scientist with a programmatic guideline but is unable to go
all the way to the destination. This makes it necessary to seek help from
24 R. HEISKALA
the synthesis of structuralism and pragmatism, as developed in the previ-

ous sections. This can be integrated with phenomenological sociology by
the idea that the articulation of meaning (Saussure) or the linking of the
object and the sign by the interpretant (Peirce) can be understood as an
‘intentional act’. This idea has two implications for phenomenological
sociology and two implications for neostructuralist semiotics.
First, the scope covered by phenomenological sociology expands,
since the sphere of meaning is not restricted exclusively to reflective
intentional acts, that is, those habits of interpretation which are not
everyday knowledge, are also included in its field of research. This nat-
urally has the implication of opening up a subfield of research in which
the actors themselves are not competent interpreters of their significa-
tion, and instead of or in addition to their interpretations, we need
hypothetical interpretations by, for example, semioticians, critical soci-
ologists or psychoanalysts (see Bourdieu, 1990 [1980]; Silverman,
1983). Second, phenomenological sociology is no longer compelled to
define meaning as a relationship between the consciousness and a sign,
which is present, in the sense that it appears to the consciousness (see
Chap. 8 later, and MacCannell, 1983: 24–25). Instead, the structural-
ist theory of articulation introduces, in addition to the act of appear-
ance of the sign to the consciousness, the associative and syntagmatic
relations that the sign has to other signs. This is how the phenomeno-
logical approach is liberated from the ‘metaphysics of presence’ and an
involved attempt to seek ‘internal speech’ (Husserl) or some other
transcendental signified, which would not be polluted by the impact of
signifiers (see Derrida, 1973 [1967], 1981 [1972]).
The reverse side of this synthetic idea is that, first, neostructuralist semi-
otics is enriched with a useful interpretation of the nature of articulation
or chain of interpretants, which can be understood as a series of successive
intentional acts in the stream of consciousness. Peirce’s analysis of the
object-relation of the sign, however, frees the synthesis from Husserl’s
solipsistic, underlying assumptions. Second, the synthesis provides a pleth-
ora of phenomenological social-theoretical concepts for neostructuralist
semiotics. These concepts are, after the internal relationship to the meta-
physics of presence and cognitivism has been jettisoned, readily available
for further work.
Conclusion: Implications for Cultural

and Social Theory
I have presented here a programmatic synthesis which can be crystallized

into the equation ‘articulation = interpretant = intentional act’. To con-
clude the argument, I try to answer the question: What can we do with the
synthetic conception and in what direction should we proceed in the future?
As far as the theory of culture is concerned, the synthetic conception
opens up a tripolar field consisting of Saussure, Peirce and Husserl/
Schutz, that is, structuralist semiology, pragmatist semiotics and phenom-
enology. Between these three poles, three bipolar subfields of debate
emerge, some of which have already been theorized up to a point. The
relationship between Saussure and Husserl has been studied by Derrida
(1974 [1967], 1978 [1962]), but he has done this only from the point of
view of metaphilosophical criticism. The relationship between Saussure
and Peirce, in turn, has been discussed by Heiskala (2003: 205–233), but
there is still work to be done in this field. The least studied of the subfields,
however, is the relationship between Husserl’s phenomenology and
Peirce’s ‘phaneroscopy’. It is equally difficult to find literature on the
entire tripolar field, even though I have presented an outline of it here.
As to social theory, I have already touched on this issue in this chapter.
The main idea was that, in neostructuralist semiotics, we have a basis for
the theory of meaning which enables redefinition of phenomenological
sociology in such a way that it is not tied to the ‘metaphysics of presence’,
and which does not limit the sphere of meaning so that it consists exclu-
sively of everyday knowledge or reflective interpretation of meaning.
Nothing much was said here about the theory of action, but this line of
thought can be extended to it, as Schutz (1982 [1932]) has already done,
so that we can understand phenomenological sociology as a basis in cul-
tural theory for action theories such as Weber’s or rational-choice theory.
This is how we arrive at Fig. 2.2, which is built on the idea that each of the
three approaches has its own area of application. If we progress from the
narrowest application towards the more broad-based ones, it can be said
that the theory of action makes certain types of social research possible. In
Schutz’s terms, we are dealing here with enclaves of social reality that are
organized by projects. Outside the sphere of projects, however, what is
needed is a broader approach, exemplified by phenomenological sociol-
ogy, which directs its attention to the totality of every-day knowledge in
addition to projects. Yet even this totality does not cover the whole
26 R. HEISKALA
action theory
phenomenological
sociology
neostructuralism
Fig. 2.2 The triangle model of meaning-analysis (Source: Heiskala, 2003: 321)
process of social semiosis. Hence, we need a neostructuralist semiotics,

which, in addition to projects and everyday knowledge, is interested in
articulations of meaning or habits of interpretation which are not projects
or knowledge and yet make both of these possible.
Two things should be noted in Fig. 2.2. First, it determines the area of
valid application for each approach. In this sense, it is an attempt to guide
research so as to avoid mistakes and the use of residual categories, both of
which arise when an approach is put to use outside its appropriate area of
application (e.g. as happens in Habermas’s, 1984 [1981] attempt to
ground the whole theory of meaning in an action-theoretical model, or in
the attempt of phenomenological sociologists to deal with non-reflective
intentional acts with categories that tie the definition of meaning to reflec-
tive intentional acts). At the same time, it is a synthetic attempt to map the
route through which it is possible to transition from one theoretical tradi-
tion to another whenever the research task at hand requires it. Second, it
must be specified what exactly is implied by presenting the differences
between the theoretical approaches in a cumulative way, so that phenom-
enological sociology covers all problems formulated in action theory and
neostructuralist semiotics covers all problems formulated in
phenomenological sociology. It is possible to read this formulation as a

programmatic declaration that neostructuralist semiotics makes phenom-
enological sociology and action theory obsolete. But this is not what is
meant here, because there are serious reasons, having to do with the
proper allocation of research resources, to hold to the principle that one
should work with as simple as possible a theory in each individual research
context. This should be clear, for example, to anyone who has ever trans-
formed an action-theoretical description of a situation into an ethnometh-
odological or conversation-analytical type description of the procedural
chain of conversational implicatures. Such a person knows only too well
that the amount of research work, the time spent on it, and the space
needed for publication of the results grows exponentially. Since the same
thing happens when we move from a phenomenological approach to neo-
structuralist semiotics, these transitions are reasonable only in cases where
we can assume that the benefits will outweigh the extra effort. In other
cases, one must be content with the use of the simplest possible set of
concepts, and it is for this reason that all three approaches in Fig. 2.2 have
an appropriate area of application.
The conception presented in this chapter is the foundation of the syn-
thetic approach of this book. We now proceed to two chapters giving meat
around the bones of the approach. First of those deals with the question
of the economy/society relationship and the second that of power. With
those two topics covered, we can then move to the applications of the
approach.
Notes
1. The new translation by Roy Harris (Saussure, 1983 [1916]) used every-
where in this article translates the terms signifié/signifiant as ‘signification/
signal’ instead of ‘signified/signifier’ used in Wade Baskin’s earlier transla-
tion (Saussure, 1974 [1916]). I here stick to Baskin’s wording because it is
established and widely used in semiotic literature and cultural studies.
2. A claim has been made that the structuralist way to grasp the emergence of
meaning through negation is time barred. This claim has been made by
those drawing upon so-called prototype semantics (Holland & Quinn,
1987; Leino, 1987). They think that a more effective way to determine
meanings is to find a prototype which is ‘the best instance of a word’s use,
and expect real-world cases to fit this best example more or less’ (Sweetser,
1987: 43). The category of bird, for example, is defined, in prototype
semantics, by referring to the swallow, but it also applies, to a lesser degree,
28 R. HEISKALA
to the hen and the penguin (Leino, 1987: 38). The structuralist counter-
argument to this reasoning is that it may well be so that, in many empirical
descriptions of cultural systems, prototype semantics is a handy way to
describe the cultural system, but as an ‘ontology of culture’, it is unable to
answer the question of how the swallow is able to remain the central proto-
type of the bird. The structuralist answer would refer to the negative play of
differences, which is the necessary condition for the articulation of signs as
elements of the cultural structure.
3. For more on different interpretations of structure (langue), speech (parole)
and their mutual relationships, see Heiskala (2003: 173–179).
4. Sulkunen and Törrönen (1997a, b), for example, are based on Greimas’s
theory, and there is no doubt that they can enrich empirical study of culture
and society. As an ontology of society or culture, however, the Greimassian
approach is problematic to say the least.
5. One benefit of this interpretation is that it solves Saussure’s problem of the
temporal nature of syntagmatic relations. Saussure thought that the flow of
time is halted in synchronic linguistics in order for the researcher to have a
research object that is not in a state of change. As concerns associative rela-
tions, this is not a problem, but syntagmatic relations are all threatened with
being interpreted as existing only in the sphere of speech, since they are
realized in a temporal chain (Saussure, 1983 [1916]: 172–173). If, how-
ever, we conceive of syntagmatic relations as internal potentialities of the
sign to participate in certain syntagmatic chains, then syntagmatic relations
can contribute to the structure in the same sense as do associative relations.
6. It is also possible, on the level of mundane phenomenology, to attempt to
justify the validity of knowledge and the intersubjectivity of interpretation
(e.g. see Natanson, 1986; Schutz, 1976b [1948]; 1976c [1942]; 1982
[1932]). This, however, is not the only issue that interests the researcher,
and it is not the privileged point of departure for the phenomenologist of
everyday life.
7. The first complete English translation was made in 1972, and the first one
with relatively acceptable terminology in 1976.
8. Alternatives here include Marx: the (economic) base structure determines
cultural interpretations; Weber: there is a dualism between the structure and
cultural interpretations, and each can determine the other depending on the
case; and Parsons: (interpretations of) values determine the structure.
9. This is how the logic of the conceptual system runs. In actual ethnomethod-
ological descriptions by Garfinkel and others and in recognizing relevant
tasks for research, Berger and Luckmann often try to deal with meanings
that have not been explicated in the form of everyday knowledge. The
problem here, however, is that they do this on the basis of the phenomeno-
logical set of concepts, which does not provide the theoretical tools to do so.
Talcott Parsons (1968 [1937]) called attempts such as this the use of ‘resid-
ual categories’. For him, finding residual categories in a theoretical corpus
was always an indication of the limited nature of the set of concepts in use
and always called for a synthetic attempt to create a more extensive set of
categories. Even though many of Parsons’s ideas have been shown to be
dated in more recent sociological debate, this one still seems pertinent.
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CHAPTER 3
Economy and Society in Semiotic

Institutionalism
The relationship between the economy and the rest of social reality has
been a central theme in modern social theory (for some of the most clas-
sical examples, see Durkheim, 1984; Marx, 1971; Simmel, 1990; Smith,
1976; Sombart, 1987; Weber, 1968) simply because the emergence of the
modern world can be characterized as the ‘great transformation’, which
made the economy the major organizing factor of the social synthesis and
thus brought forth the problem of political regulation of the economy
(Polanyi, 1944). Recent debate on globalization shows that, even if the
approaches of different authors vary, they all agree that the relationship
between the economy and the rest of social reality is an even more burn-
ing question today than in the time of the classics (cf. Held et al., 1999;
Hirst & Thompson, 1999; Castells, 2000; Sassen, 2001; Mann, 2013;
Milanovic, 2019).
The centrality of the economy in the modern world could make us
think that among the social sciences it is economics towards which one
should turn for an illuminating account of the economy/society relation-
ship. Curiously enough this is not the case, and it is sociology rather than
economics that one will have to consult for an analysis of this relationship.
To understand why this is so, we will have to spend some time with the
basic concepts of these two modern disciplines.

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[1178] Ibid., cccxxxi, 7.
[1179] State Papers, Dom., cccxxxiv, 16. Stradling to Nicholas.
[1180] Autobiography of the Rev. Devereux Spratt. London,
1886. It need hardly be said that the jealousies of Christian
princes were a large factor in causing the immunity in which these
barbarian states so long rejoiced. Spratt was captured while
crossing from Cork to Bristol.
[1181] It does not come within the design of this work to
describe the operations of fleets at sea, but, in this instance, I
must venture to question Mr Gardiner’s depreciatory estimate of
William Rainsborow as a commander. Mr Gardiner considers that
such success as was obtained was due neither to Rainsborow’s
skill nor to the efficiency of his men, but to the existence of civil
strife, disorganising what might have been a united opposition,
between the old and new towns of Sallee, situated opposite each
other on the right and left banks of the river Regreb (Hist. of
England, viii, 270). When Rainsborow arrived off Sallee on 24th
March with four ships, he found that they drew too much water to
close in effectually with the town. Instead of wandering off
helplessly to Cadiz and spending his time in ‘shooting and
ostentation,’ as Mansell did to Malaga under adverse
circumstances, Rainsborow, while he sent to England for lighter
vessels, organised a blockade with the boats of his squadron. So
far as I know he was the first of our commanders to recognise—
and almost invent—the possibilities of boat work on a large scale,
in which English seamen afterwards became such adepts, and it
appears rather that his readiness and resource under unexpected
and unfavourable conditions should alone be sufficient to relieve
his memory from the charge of want of skill. That this patrol duty
was no child’s play is shown by the fact that in one night’s work
thirty men were killed and wounded in the boats (John Dunton, A
True Journal of the Sallee Fleet. London, 1637). In June he was
joined by the Providence and Expedition, which made the task
easier; but for the previous three months, riding on a dangerous
lee shore, in a bad anchorage, and exposed to the heavy Atlantic
swell, using the ships by day and the boats by night, he never
relaxed his bulldog grip on the place, in itself a proof of fine
seamanship. That the end came more quickly from the existence
of civil war is very certain, but I think no one who reads Dunton’s
account (he was an officer of the flagship), and Rainsborow’s own
modestly written Journal (State Papers, Dom., ccclxix, 72), can
doubt that the result would eventually have been the same,
seeing that the blockade grew closer day by day until at last every
vessel which attempted to pass in or out was captured or
destroyed. In August, when the enemy were already crushed, two
more ships joined him, and he was then quite strong enough to
have dealt with both the old and new towns, had they been
united, or to have gone on, as he desired to go on, to settle
accounts with Algiers. It should also be remarked that
Rainsborow anticipated Blake in attacking forts with ships, the
Providence being sent in within musket range of the castle and
coming out unscathed from the contest. Looked at from another
point of view, and compared with the French attempts against
Sallee, Rainsborow’s ability and success stand out just as clearly.
In 1624 M. de Razilly was sent down with a squadron, but
permitted himself to be driven off by weather; in 1629 he came
again, and, after lying off the port for three months and
negotiating on equal terms with these savages, had to depart
without having obtained the release of a single French captive. A
surely significant contrast!
That Charles was satisfied with Rainsborow does not, perhaps,
prove much, although he offered him knighthood and did give him
a gold medal and chain and make him captain of the Sovereign, a
post then of high honour. But Northumberland, a very much better
judge was equally well pleased, and in 1639, strongly
recommended him to the burgesses of Aldborough as their
member. Northumberland, not then Lord Admiral, but paramount
in naval affairs, is also entitled to a measure of the credit of
success; for had Rainsborow been dependent on the energy and
intelligence of the Principal Officers of the Navy for the supplies
which enabled him to keep his station he would probably have
fared but badly. And doubtless many of the men who under him
worked with such courage and devotion had formed part of the
demoralised and useless crews who were such objects of scorn
to Wimbledon and his officers before Cadiz in 1625. The only
difference was in the commander.
[1182] State Papers, Dom., cccclix, 8, 60.
[1183] Halliwell’s Royal Letters, II, 277.
[1184] The first Commissioners of the Admiralty acted by
Letters Patent of 20th September 1628. They were Richard, Lord
Weston, Lord Treasurer; Robert, Earl of Lindsey, Great
Chamberlain; William, Earl of Pembroke, Lord Steward; Edward,
Earl of Dorset, Lord Chamberlain to the Queen; Dudley, Viscount
Dorchester, Vice-Chamberlain of the Household; and Sir John
Coke, Secretary of State. Powers were granted to them or any
three of them. Although in modern phrase they are called Lords of
the Admiralty, they were in reality a committee of the Privy
Council, carrying out the instructions of the King and Council, who
retained the power and exercised the control of an eighteenth
century Admiralty Board. A fresh commission was issued on 20th
November 1632, which omitted Lords Pembroke and Dorchester,
and added Lord Cottington, Sir Francis Windebank, and Sir Henry
Vane (the elder). The third and last commission was of 16th
March 1636 to William Juxon, Bishop of London, Lord Treasurer,
Lords Cottington, Lindsey, and Dorset; and Vane, Coke, and
Windebank.
[1185] His patent as Lord Admiral was dated 28th Jan. 1619.
[1186] State Papers, Dom., Charles I, ccxli, 85, 86.
[1187] Add. MSS., 9301, f. 110.
[1188] State Papers, Dom., ccciv, 9.
[1189] State Papers, Dom., Elizabeth, ccxxxvii, f. 138.
[1190] State Papers, Dom., Charles I, ccclxxii, 21.
[1191] Rot. Pat., 5th April 1627.
[1192] It will be remembered that during his treasurership he
helped himself to £3000 from the Chatham Chest, and that the
money was still owing in 1644. After his dismissal from office
Crowe was ambassador of the Levant Company at
Constantinople, and, in 1646, nearly ruined that company by, on
the one hand, quarrelling with the Porte, and on the other
imprisoning the members and agents of the association. When he
returned in 1648 he was sent to the Tower, but seems to have
escaped scatheless.
[1193] Rot. Pat., 11th Feb. 1626 (a renewal of his patent of
James I), and 21st Jan. 1630.
[1194] Rot. Pat., 12th Jan. 1639.
[1195] Ibid.
[1196] Ibid., 19th Dec. 1632.
[1197] Ibid., 26th Sept. 1638.
[1198] By an order of 13th Feb. 1637 no place in the Navy or
Ordnance offices was henceforth to be granted for life, but only
during pleasure. Edisbury’s real name was Wilkinson (see
Hasted, Hist. of Kent, I, 20 note, ed. Drake, London, 1886).
[1199] State Papers, Dom., cxxxv, 37.
[1200] Ibid., clii, 51.
[1201] Add. MSS., 9301, ff. 121, 133.
[1202] Barlow lived to contest the place with Pepys in 1660.
The date of his patent was 16th Feb. 1639.
[1203] State Papers, Dom., clxxiii, 6. Mervyn to Nicholas.
[1204] The Duke of York was ‘declared’ Lord Admiral at a
meeting of the Council on 18th March 1638. There was no patent.
[1205] Rot. Pat., 13th April 1638.
[1206] Add. MSS., 9297, f. 178
[1207] The price of beer at this time was about £1, 10s a tun.
[1208] In 1634 Palmer, the Comptroller, Denis Fleming, Clerk of
the Acts, Phineas Pett, another Principal Officer, and several
storekeepers and masters attendant had all been suspended for
selling government stores for their own profit.
[1209] State Papers, Dom., cccliii, f. 88.
[1210] State Papers, Dom., cccliii, f. 55.
[1211] State Papers, Dom., xiii, 70, (1625), i.e., by the system
of servants and apprentices. It was not until 1647 that the
shipkeepers in the Medway were ordered to strike the bell on
board every half-hour through the night (Add. MSS., 9306, f. 103).
[1212] State Papers, Dom., cclviii, 30.
[1213] Discourse of the Navy, (Add. MSS., 9335).
[1214] Discourse of the Navy (Add. MSS., 9335).
[1215] State Papers, Dom., xxvii, 69.
[1216] Ibid., cli, 33.
[1217] Ibid., cclx, 29. Edisbury to Nicholas.
[1218] Ibid., cclxiii, 19.
[1219] Add. MSS., 9306, f. 119.
[1220] State Papers, Dom., xxiii, 120; 1626. Ten years later
Northumberland still complained about this. There had been no
reform.
[1221] State Papers, Dom., cccclxxx, 36.
[1222] Ibid., ccccxxix, 33.
[1223] It must not, however, be supposed that naval morality
was worse during the reigns of James and Charles than
subsequently. Leaving the eighteenth century out of consideration
it was said that at the beginning of this one the annual public loss
from fraud and embezzlement ran into millions, a sum which may
well have almost drawn the shades of Mansell and hundreds of
other pettifogging seventeenth century navy thieves back to earth.
The great difference was that at the later date, whether from
higher principle or stricter discipline, the combatant branches of
the service were honest, the theft and jobbery being confined to
the Admiralty, Navy and Victualling Boards, and dockyard
establishments. Lord St Vincent said of the Navy Board that it was
‘the curse of the Navy,’ and the methods of the dockyards may be
gauged from the fact that while the (present) Victory cost £97,400
to build, £143,600 were in fifteen years expended on her repairs.
Of the Admiralty there will be much to be said.
[1224] State Papers, Dom., ccxxix, 114.
[1225] Ibid., ccxlv, 19.
[1226] State Papers, Dom., cviii, 18.
[1227] Ibid., ccxxvii, 1.
[1228] Ibid., cclxix, 67.
[1229] Ibid., ccclxxvi, 160 and ccccxlii, 12. Cf. supra, p. 239.
[1230] Ibid., cccxcvii, 37.
[1231] State Papers, Dom., cccclxxvi, 115.
[1232] Butler’s Dialogical Discourse, &c. Of course the guns
would be going all the time; this form of reception appears to have
been that given also to the King or to a general commanding an
expedition.
[1233] State Papers, Dom., liii, 40. Heydon to Nicholas.
[1234] State Papers, Dom., lxxxviii, 27.
[1235] Ibid., ccxx, 25. Professor Laughton was the first to
suggest (Fortnightly Review, July 1866), that the real origin of the
English claim to the lordship of the narrow seas is to be found in
the possession by our early kings of both shores of the Channel.
[1236] Ibid., 2nd May 1635.
[1237] State Papers, Dom., cccxvii, 102.
[1238] Ibid., cccxxxvi, 13 and cccxxxviii, 39.
[1239] Aud. Off. Decl. Accounts, 1699, 65.
[1240] Ibid., 1812, 443 a.
[1241] The last of tonnage measurement varied in different
places, but was of about two tons.
[1242] State Papers, Dom., ccccxxxviii, 102.
[1243] Pennington and his men were paid double wages ‘out of
the French king’s moneys’ (Aud. Off. Decl. Accounts, 1698, 63),
which throws their intense abhorrence of their work into still
stronger relief.
[1244] In this year the Navy and Ordnance offices were
£251,000 in arrears (State Papers, lxxxvii, 35).
[1245] Add. MSS., 17,503.
[1246] Includes ‘all incident expenses,’ such as repairs,
shipkeepers, administration, etc.; the difference between the
totals of the third and fourth columns, together, and the fifth is in
great part covered by the cost of the winter fleets.
[1247] And eight pinnaces.
[1248] Summer ‘guard,’ or fleet.
[1249] Winter guard.
[1250] Includes allowance of twenty shillings a month per man
to the crews of 48 privateers.
[1251] Includes cost of new ships building.
[1252] Few historical students admire Charles I, but even such
a king as he is entitled to the justice of posterity beyond that
which he obtained from his contemporaries. Professor Hosmer
(Life of Sir H. Vane the Younger, p. 497) says that Vane, ‘had
created the fleet out of nothing, had given it guns and men.’ He
appears to think that a naval force, with its subsidiary
manufactures and establishments, could be created in a few
years, but, as a matter of fact, Parliament commenced the
struggle infinitely better equipped at sea than on land, and it was
so powerful afloat that it did not find it necessary to begin building
again till 1646, when the result of the struggle was assured. If Mr
Hosmer is referring to a later period, the statement is still more
questionable, since the number of men-of-war had been
increased and Vane had ceased to have any special connexion,
except in conjunction with others, with naval affairs. Allowing for
his narrow intelligence and vacillating temperament Charles
showed more persistence and continuity of design in the
government of the Navy than in any other of his regal duties; for,
although relatively weaker as regards other powers, England, as
far as ships and dockyards were concerned, was stronger
absolutely in 1642 than in 1625. The use made of the ship-money
showed that under no circumstances could Charles have been a
great naval organiser; but he has at least a right to have it said
that he improved the matériel of the Navy so far as his limited
views and disastrous domestic policy permitted.
Returning to Vane, Mr Hosmer says in one place (p. 148), that
the post of Treasurer was worth £30,000, and in another (p. 376),
£20,000 a year. What Mr Hosmer’s authority (G. Sikes, The Life
and Death of Sir Henry Vane), really writes is, ‘The bare
poundage, which in time of peace came to about £3000, would
have amounted to about £20,000 by the year during the war with
Holland.’ The poundage in peace years never approached £3000,
and, as Vane ceased to be Treasurer in 1650, and, from the date
of his resignation, a lower scale of payment was adopted, the
second part of the calculation is obviously nothing to the purpose.
Whether the reduction in the Treasurer’s commission was due to
Vane, or whether he resigned on account of it, we have no
evidence to show, nor do vague generalities help to clear the
doubt. As bearing testimony to Vane’s disinterestedness Mr
Hosmer quotes Sikes to the effect that he returned half his
receipts, from the date of his appointment as sole Treasurer, at
the time of the self-denying ordinance. Unfortunately the accounts
previous to 1645 are wanting and the question must remain open,
but if the probability may be judged by general tendency it must
be said to be extremely unlikely, since he was Treasurer from 8th
Aug. 1642 till 31st Dec. 1650, and during that time received in
poundage and salary for the five-and-a-half years for which the
accounts remain the sum of £19,620, 1s 10d. There is no sign in
the audit office papers that he returned one penny of his legal
dues, and, whoever else had to wait, he seems to have paid
himself liberally and punctually. Mr Hosmer has only indirectly
noticed that Parliament, when Vane resigned, settled a retiring
pension on him. Sikes says, ‘some inconsiderable matter without
his seeking, was allotted to him by the Parliament in lieu thereof’
(i.e., of his place). The ‘inconsiderable matter,’ was landed estate
producing £1200 a year. Seeing that he held his post for only
seven and a half years, that during that time he must have
received at least £25,000, and that all previous Treasurers had
been, on occasion, dismissed without any suggestion of
compensation, his disinterestedness may be questioned. When
Parliament voted Ireton an estate of £2000 a year he refused it on
account of the poverty of the country. And Sikes’s version that it
was ‘without his seeking’ is not absolutely beyond doubt. On June
27th, 1650, a petition of Vane’s was referred to a committee to
discuss how the treasurership was to be managed from Dec. 31st
following, and ‘also to consider what compensation is fit to be
given to the petitioner out of that office or otherwise in
consideration of his right in the said office.’ It is no unjustifiable
assumption to infer from this the possibility that the petition at any
rate included a claim for compensation. Sikes, again, tells us that
he caused his subordinate Hutchinson to succeed him, but when,
on 10th Oct. 1650, the motion was before the House that the
‘question be now put’ whether Hutchinson’s appointment should
be made, Vane was one of the tellers for the ‘Noes’ and was
beaten by 27 to 18. This was immediately followed by
Hutchinson’s nomination without a division. The incidents of
Hutchinson’s official career imply a much stronger and more
lasting influence than that of Vane, but the only importance of the
question is as affecting the trustworthiness of the latter’s
seventeenth century biographer. Mr Hosmer, like all other writers
on Vane, appears to quote Sikes with implicit faith, but the man
evidently wrote only loosely and generally, making up in
enthusiasm what he lacked in exactness; e.g., ‘In the beginning of
that expensive war he resigned the treasurership of the Navy.’
Hutchinson succeeded him from 1st Jan. 1650-1, and war with
Holland did not occur till June 1652. There is nothing to show that
Vane was not an honest administrator, but his party, fortunately,
produced many others equally trustworthy.
[1253] Add. MSS., 9302, f. 42.
[1254] State Papers, Dom., ccxxxix, 43.
[1255] Add. MSS., 9297, f. 75.
[1256] State Papers, Dom., clxxiii, 32.
[1257] Supra, p. 150.
[1258] State Papers, Dom., ccxlv, 49; January 1627.
[1259] Ibid., l, 45.
[1260] Ibid., cxxxviii, 66.
[1261] Ibid., cxliii, 37.
[1262] J. Holland, Discourse of the Navy.
[1263] Add. MSS., 9301, f. 135.
[1264] Egerton MSS., 2541, f. 123, Deptford was chiefly used
for building, and Chatham for repairing.
[1265] State Papers, Dom., cccii, 27.
[1266] Ibid., cccliii, f. 67.
[1267] State Papers, Dom., cccxlvii, 85.
[1268] Ibid., xlviii, January 20. This, must, however, refer to
some improvements as ring-bolts for the purpose are mentioned
earlier.
[1269] Fœdera, xix, 549.
[1270] It is possible, too, that the present navy button and cap
badge may be traced back, in inception, to the parliamentary
régime. Northumberland’s seal consisted merely of his arms
(reverse), with (obverse) a figure on horseback with a background
of sea and ships; and although earlier Lords Admirals—
Southampton, Lincoln, and Buckingham—had used the anchor,
none of them had combined the coronet, anchor, and wreath.
Warwick’s was one which differs only in the relative proportions of
the details from the button and badge now in use, except that the
anchor is now fouled. If it is only a coincidence it is a curious one.
Popham, Blake, and Deane employed a modification of Warwick’s
seal, omitting the crown; and the Navy Office adopted another,
consisting of three anchors, a large centre one with a smaller on
each side, and ‘The Seale of the Navye Office’ round the edge, so
that the device selected by Warwick seems, in one form or
another, to have been soon widely used and continued. A
reproduction of this Navy Office Seal is used on the binding, and
at the foot of the Preface, of the present volume.
[1271] These prices were paid by the government; the cost to
the sailor depended on the honesty of many intermediaries.
[1272] State Papers, Dom., Interreg., 22nd June 1649; Council
to Generals of fleet.
[1273] Captain John Stevens, Royal Treasury of England, 1725.
He gives no authorities and his figures are very doubtful, but Mr
Dowell (Hist. of Taxes) appears to quote him as trustworthy. In
any case the revenues of the republic enormously exceeded
those of the monarchy. The anonymous writer of a Restoration
pamphlet (The Mystery of the Good Old Cause, 1660) estimates
that the Commonwealth raised £3,000,000 a year.
[1274] The value, in 1894, of the English merchant navy was
£122,000,000, Admiralty expenditure £18,500,000; of the French
merchant navy £10,100,000, Admiralty expenditure £10,500,000.
[1275] Add. MSS., 5500, f. 25.
[1276] De Witt, The True Interest of Holland, p. 227. De Witt
notices the preference given to land operations during the thirty
years’ war.
[1277] Ibid., p. 218, et seq.
[1278] In the Dutch service each captain contracted to provision
his own ship, and the men had meat only once a week.
[1279] Relatively, that is, judged by a standard of comparison
with what they had endured under the Stewarts.
[1280] Burton’s Diary, III, 57, 3rd February 1658-9. There are
several other references in Burton to the care the Long
Parliament bestowed on the Navy.
[1281] Gumble, Life of Monk, p. 75. Eleven hundred according
to a Dutch life of Tromp.
[1282] This is, perhaps, not literally correct; a contemporary
seaman, Gibson, tells us that the aim of the English captains was
to lie on the bow or quarter of their antagonists (Add. MSS.,
11,602, f. 77), but that was very different from the game of long
bowls Englishmen had learnt to be the best medicine for
Spaniards, and had never till now discarded. Our fleets went into
action en masse, the only rule being that each captain should
keep as close as possible to the flag of his divisional commander.
The result at times was that while some ships were being
overwhelmed by superior force others hardly fired a gun, and an
officer who had closely obeyed the letter of his instructions might
afterwards find himself charged with cowardice and neglect of
duty.
[1283] State Papers, Dom., 19th March 1649. There was
theological bitterness involved as well, since the Navy
Commissioners directed that any man refusing meat in Lent was
to be dismissed as refractory, (Add. MSS., 9304, f. 54).
[1284] State Papers, Dom., 12th March 1649, Council to
Generals of the fleet. John Sparrow, Rich. Blackwell, and
Humphrey Blake were appointed on 17th April 1649 to be
treasurers and collectors of prize goods; Rich. Hill, Sam. Wilson,
and Robt. Turpin were added from 8th March 1653.
[1285] Commons Journals, 21st Dec. 1652. The ‘medium’ cost
of each man at sea was reckoned at £4 a month, including
wages, victuals, wear and tear of ships, stores, provision for sick
and wounded, and other incidental expenses. Rawlinson MSS.
(Bodleian Library), A 9, p. 176.
[1286] State Papers, Dom., 12th May 1649, Council to
Generals at sea.
[1287] It is advisable to dwell on this point because the late Mrs
Everett Green (Preface to Calendar of State Papers, 1649-50, p.
24), said, speaking of the Commonwealth seamen generally, that
‘disaffection and mutiny were frequent among them,’ and writers
of less weight have echoed this opinion. The instances of mutiny
were in reality very few—seven between 1649 and 1660—were
not serious, and were, in every case but one attributable to
drunkenness or to wages and prize money remaining unpaid, the
single exception being due to the refusal of a crew to proceed to
sea in what they held to be an unseaworthy ship. This is a very
trifling number compared with the series of such events occurring
during nearly every year of the reign of Charles I. Of disaffection
in the sense of a leaning towards the Stewarts there is not a trace
among the men, and but two or three examples among officers.
The exiles in France and Holland, with that optimism peculiar to
the unfortunate, were continually anticipating that ships and men
were coming over to the royal cause, an anticipation never once
verified in the event. The analogue of the seventeenth century
seaman, if he exists to-day at all, is to be found, not in the man-
of-war’s man, who now has literary preferences and an account in
the ship’s savings bank, but in the rough milieu of a trader’s
forecastle, and among men of this type violence, or even an
outbreak of savage ruffianism, by no means necessarily implies
serious ground of discontent, but may be owing to one of many
apparently inadequate causes. There were no such outbreaks
among the Commonwealth seamen, and the punishments for
drunkenness and insubordination were not disproportionate to the
number of men employed, but if that is made an argument it
should also be applied to the army; nearly every page of
Whitelocke furnishes us with instances of officers and men being
broken, sentenced, or dismissed for theft, insubordination, and
sometimes disaffection, but no one has yet suggested that the
army yearned to restore the Stewarts. The two most striking
examples of these mutinies usually quoted are those of the Hart
in 1650 and the riotous assemblies in London in 1653. In the case
of the Hart what actually happened was that, the captain and
officers being on shore, 28 out of the 68 men on board seized the
ship when the others were below, with the intention, according to
one contemporary writer, of taking her over to Charles, according
to another, of turning pirates, and according to a third, because
they were drunk. Perhaps all three causes were at work, seeing
that the mutineers soon quarrelled among themselves, and the
loyal majority of the crew regained possession of the ship and
brought her back to Harwich. Yet I have seen a serious writer
quote the Hart as an example of desertion to the royalists, an
error probably due to the fact that she was afterwards captured by
the Dutch, and eventually sailed under a Stewart commission until
she blew up at the Canaries. In October 1653 there were tumults
in London, due entirely to the non-payment of prize money, and
these, it is true, required to be suppressed by military force. But
this riot, extending over two days, was the only instance in which
the government found difficulty in dealing with the men, and does
not warrant a general charge of disloyalty during eleven years. If
a detailed examination of the remaining instances were worth the
space, they could be shown to be equally due to causes remote
from politics. Historically, a mutiny among English seamen has
never necessarily signified disloyalty to the de facto sovereign or
government; the mutineers at Spithead and the Nore in 1797
were especially careful to declare their loyalty to the crown, and
their failure at the Nore was probably due to the extent to which
they carried this feeling. If the character of the service rendered to
the republic is compared with that given to Charles I, it is difficult
to understand how the charge of disaffection can be maintained.
[1288] State Papers, Dom., 24th May 1652, Council to vice-
admirals of counties. The subject of impressment belongs more
fitly to the eighteenth century. Here it will be sufficient to remark
that while in many cases the government officials reported that
the men were coming in willingly of their own accord, in others the
press masters found great difficulty in executing their warrants,
and writers of newsletters in London describe the seizure of
landsmen and forcible entry of houses, in which seamen were
supposed to be hiding, in a fashion which reminds the reader of
the beginning of the present century. The two versions are not
irreconcilable; at all times there has been a remainder, after the
best men had been obtained, difficult to reach and willing to make
any sacrifice to escape a man-of-war.
[1289] Add. MSS., 9306, f. 85.
[1290] Thomason Pamphlets, 684/9 The regulations of 1649
were only adaptations of the rules made, independently, long
before by each Lord Admiral when in command of a fleet. Mr
Gardiner has suggested to me that the formal enactment of the
articles at that particular moment was possibly directly connected
with the defeat off Dungeness in November. This view is
supported by the fact that they were obviously not aimed at the
men, with whose conduct no fault had been found and whose
position was, if anything, improved by them, by the definition of
crime and punishment and the institution of a court of eight
officers; while, on the other hand, the severest clauses are those
affecting officers whose conduct, both in action and when
cruising, had in many cases caused great dissatisfaction.
[1291] State Papers, Dom., 31st Dec. 1653.
[1292] State Papers, Dom., 4th Feb. 1652.
[1293] Ibid., 15th Dec. 1652.
[1294] State Papers, Dom., lx, 135, October 1653; Bourne to
Navy Commissioners.
[1295] State Papers, Dom., xxix, 57; October 1652.
[1296] Ibid., 6th Jan. 1653.
[1297] Ibid., xxx, 84, and xlv, 66.
[1298] From the Dutch Grom, or Low Latin Gromettus, one
occupied in a servile office. Gromet is at least as old as the
thirteenth century and then meant a ship’s boy. Later it came to
mean ordinary seamen; here it is applied to a class between
ordinary seamen and boys, but probably nearer, in qualifications,
to the former than the latter.
[1299] The earliest mention of midshipmen yet noticed is in a
letter of 7th Feb. 1642-3, in which a Mr Cook writes that he will
not undervalue himself by allowing his son to accept such a
place.
[1300] The pay of the privates was 18s per month; no officer of
higher rank than serjeant was in charge.
[1301] State Papers, Dom., 19th April 1655. Hatsell to Col.
John Clerke (an Admiralty Commissioner).
[1302] State Papers, Dom., ccv, 54. Disborowe lent £5000,
which he had succeeded in getting back; seven aldermen
£19,500, of which £11,700 still remained.
[1303] Add. MSS., 22,546, f. 185, and 18,986, f. 176.
[1304] The methods of these gentlemen were sometimes
directly ancestral to those of their successors in the prize courts
of the beginning of this century. In one case a ship was
condemned and its cargo sold, apparently on their own sole
authority; the Admiralty Court ordered restitution, and then the
Commissioners presented a bill of £2000 for expenses (State
Papers, Dom., 26th Feb. 1655). A contemporary wrote, ‘It was
nothing for ordinary proctors in the Admiralty to get £4000 or
£5000 a year by cozening the state in their prizes till your
petitioner by his discovery to the Council of State spoiled their
trade for a great part of it,’ (T. Violet, A True Narrative, etc., Lond.
1659, p. 8).
[1305] State Papers, Dom., xc, 2.
[1306] Ibid., 18th March 1654.
[1307] Resolutions at a Council of War on board the Swiftsure:
The humble Petition of the Seamen belonging to the Ships of the
Commonwealth. These two broadsides are in the British Museum
under the press mark 669 f. 19, Nos. 32 and 33, ‘Great Britain
and Ireland—Navy.’
[1308] State Papers, Dom., lxxvi, 81; 1645 (? Oct.).
[1309] State Papers, Dom., clxxiii, 26th Oct. 1657; Morris to
Navy Commissioners.
[1310] Add. MSS., 9304, f. 129. The Sapphire seems to have
been the crack cruiser of her time. The contrast between that
which, with all its faults, was a strong administration, morally
stimulating to officers and men, and the enervating Stewart
régime is illustrated in the life and death—if the expression be
permitted—of this ship, and exemplified in the grim entry in the
burial register of St Nicholas, Deptford, under date of 26th Aug.
1670, ‘Capt. John Pearse and Lieut. Logan shot to death for
loosing ye Saphier cowardly.’
[1311] State Papers, Dom., clxxxii, 8; 6th July 1658.
[1312] State Papers, Dom., 15th Sept., and 16th Nov. 1658.
[1313] I have only noticed one instance of direct interference by
Cromwell in minor details. The widow of a seaman, killed by an
accident on the Fagons, had petitioned the Commissioners of sick
and wounded for help, and had been refused by them. She then
appealed to the Protector, and her memorial bears his holograph
direction to the Commissioners to reconsider their decision, the
case being the same ‘in equity’ as though the man had lost his life
in action (State Papers, cxxx, 98; 10th Nov. 1656). If this is the
only surviving illustration of the character of his intervention in
questions connected with the well-being of the men it is gratifying
that it should be of such a nature.
[1314] State Papers, Dom., ccxii, 109. The revenue of England
for 1659 was estimated at £1,517,000 (Commons Journals).
[1315] Allowance for short victuals.
[1316] State Papers, Dom., ccxxii, 28.
[1317] State Papers, Dom., 20th Dec. 1652.
[1318] Ibid., 21st and 26th March 1653.
[1319] Ibid., 14th April 1654.
[1320] State Papers, Dom., 5th April 1653.
[1321] Ibid., 31st March 1654.
[1322] Ibid., cxl, 43.
[1323] State Papers, Dom., 17th Dec., 1657.
[1324] Add. MSS., 9304, ff. 133,135. It would not be just to
pass from the subject of the aid afforded to the men in disease
and suffering without some notice of Elizabeth Alkin, otherwise
‘Parliament Joan,’ who wore out health and life in their service.
This woman appears to have nursed wounded soldiers during the
civil war, for which she was in receipt of a pension, and, in
February 1653, volunteered similar help for the sailors. She was
then ordered to Portsmouth, and, in view of the before noticed
condition of the town, must have found very real work to which to
put her hand. If £325 went in one item to nurses there must have
been plenty of a kind to be had; but she gave her heart to her
helpless patients, and in June had spent not only all the
government allowance but also her own money, as ‘I cannot see
them want if I have it.’ She was then sent to Harwich, and on
22nd Feb. 1654 returned, weak and ill, to London, with only 3s
remaining. Of the last £10 given to her she had spent £6 on the
Dutch prisoners at Harwich: ‘Seeing their wants and miseries so
great, I could not but have pity on them though our enemies.’ A
week later she again appeals for at least an instalment of her
pension, or to be sent to a hospital in which ‘to end my days less
miserably,’ having been forced to sell even her bed. In May and
September 1654, two warrants, each for £10, were made out, and
her name does not occur again. Even these few data are
sufficient to suggest the outline of a life of self-sacrifice, illumined
by a native kindliness of heart and unsoured by religious
fanaticism, of which there is not a trace in her letters.
[1325] State Papers, Dom., c, 139.
[1326] From seamen’s wages.
[1327] By estimation.
[1328] Average for three years, less taxes.
[1329] By estimation.
[1330] Add. MSS., 9305, 13th Jan. 1657.
[1331] State Papers, Dom., cxxv, 39, 11. Under Charles I,
widows obtained donations from it, but no pensions.
[1332] Add. MSS., 9317, f. 1 et seq. We have not Pett’s reply,
and the full force of the accusations, as they stand, is vitiated by
the fact that they were made by royalist servants inquiring into the
conduct of a Commonwealth official. The committee of inquiry in
1662 consisted of Sir J. Mennes, Sir W. Coventry, Sir W. Penn, W.
Rider, S. Pepys, and R. Ford.
[1333] State Papers, Dom., 30th Nov. 1650. There were five
partners joined with Pride—John Limbrey, Wm. Beak, Thos.
Alderne, Dennis Gauden, and Rich. Pierce (Audit Office Dec.
Accounts, 1708-96). The rates, in 1645, had been eightpence
three farthings and sevenpence; the Victualling was then under
the supervision of the Treasurer (Ibid., 1706-90).
[1334] State Papers, Dom., 12th Jan. 1653, and Add. MSS.,
9306, f. 2.
[1335] State Papers, Dom., xxx, 10.
[1336] State Papers, Dom., 17th Oct. 1654, 1st, 7th, 14th Aug.,
and 8th Sept. 1655.
[1337] It is said that Alderne’s executors could produce neither
vouchers nor assets for £200,000 imprested to him. But the story
rests only on the authority of a royalist Comptroller of the Navy,
Sir R. Slingsby (Discourse of the Navy, f. 58).
[1338] Add. MSS., 9300, f. 330; 19th Nov. 1656.
[1339] State Papers, Dom., 31st Jan. 1660.
[1340] State Papers, Dom., 6th March 1660.
[1341] Ibid., 16th Aug. 1650. This is the medal shown on the
title page.
[1342] State Papers, Dom., cxliv, 66, 68, and Add. MSS., 9305,
f. 155. The Triumph medal was ‘For eminent service in saving ye
Triumph fired in fight w ye Dutch in July 1653.’
[1343] S. P. D., cxvii, 64; 11th Dec. 1655.
[1344] Ibid., cxxxiv, 64.
[1345] Ibid., cxlv, 47; Sep. 1656.
[1346] This list is based on that of Dering (Archæologia, xlviii),
but corrected where collation with the State Papers and other
authorities points in some cases to the certainty, in others to the
probability, of Dering’s being in error, completed by the insertion
of omitted dates, and enlarged by the addition of all such vessels
as were wrecked, captured, destroyed, or sold out of the service,
between 1649 and 1660 and which the Archæologia list, being
only one of ships effective in 1660, does not profess to supply.
Prizes, originally privateers and taken into the service, are
indicated by an asterisk. Being the first attempt at a complete
Commonwealth Navy list, it must almost necessarily contain
some errors, but it is certain that every ship here mentioned was
carried on the Navy list of the state. A few others omitted as
doubtful or more than doubtful may really be entitled to a place in
it; some of the prizes assigned to 1653 may belong to 1652, and,
in some instances, continuity or similarity of name renders the
exact date of purchase or capture a little problematical. It has not
been thought necessary to overload this list with the innumerable
references that could be given, especially as the details seldom
exactly agree in the various papers, but no name has been
inserted except on what appears to be sufficient authority.
Dering’s Dolphin, Minion and Pearl Brigantine, I have been unable
to place; the Pearl is only once mentioned, in 1658, as being ‘for
use as occasion requires.’ The Diver which is also given by him,
was not a man-of-war at all, but a hoy temporarily hired for use in
recovering the guns of wrecked ships, and the Princess, of his
list, was not launched till August 1660. Some of the Dutch prizes
were converted into fire ships before being sold. The use of fire
ships was not new in either the English or foreign services, but
they now appear to have been systematically attached to fleets
and, on one or two occasions, to have been used with effect.
It may be well to remark that the document of April 1660 (State
Papers, ccxx, 33), which purports to be a list of ships then
existing, is altogether untrustworthy.
[1347] The Guinea, Amity, Concord, Discovery, Gilliflower,
Mayflower, Hopewell, Accada, Nonsuch Ketch, and Marmaduke,
were bought into the service in the respective years under which
they are placed, and are marked (B).
[1348] Or Great President.
[1349] The Gilliflower, then called the Archangel, and the
Marmaduke, were two prizes taken by Rupert, recaptured at sea
by their own crews, brought back to England, and taken into the
service.
[1350] Usually said to have been lost in action of July 1653, but
can be traced as the Dunkirk after 1660.
[1351] There is a model of the Bristol in the museum of the
Royal Naval College of Greenwich. No confirmatory evidence is
added to the bare statements of names and dates on the labels
attached to these models, and the dates assigned to some of
them do not inspire a heedless confidence. However, from the
character of the decoration, etc., the model ticketed Bristol is
probably, at any rate, of this period.
[1352] Rebuilt.
[1353] Rebuilt.
[1354] Most of the Commonwealth ships were named after
some event of the civil war. This is probably a derivative of St
Fagans, near Llandaff, where there was a fight in 1647.
[1355] The Royal James, a Stewart privateer, commanded by
captain Beach, afterwards admiral Sir Richard Beach, of the
Royal Navy, who during the exile gave the state’s ships much
trouble. Renamed from the French Les Sorlinges, near which she
was taken.
[1356] The Blackmoor and Chestnut were especially designed
for service on the coast of Virginia (State Papers, Dom., cxli, 127).
[1357] A Spanish prize; the earlier Elias was Dutch, and
remained in the effective as a cruiser.
[1358] For use in the Medway, and carrying one bow gun.
[1359] Add. MSS., 11,602, f, 49.
[1360] State Papers, Dom., ccxiii, 81.
[1361] Dering’s list.
[1362] Ed. Hayward, The Sizes and Lengths of Rigging for all
His Majesty’s Ships, 1660. Although not printed till 1660 this was
written in 1655.
[1363] The absence of all allusion to davits is stranger from the
fact that they are found referred to, evidently as well known and in
common use, in navy papers of 1496. They were then used for
the anchors. It seems singular that in the intervening century and
a half the principle had not been applied to hoisting in the boats.
In the Nomenclator Navalis of 1625 (really Manwayring’s
Dictionary) he speaks of boat tackles ‘wch stand one on the main
mast shrowds the other on the fore mast shrowds to hoise the
boat,’ and this plan was identical with that in use in 1514 (see
Appendix A).
[1364] Audit Office Accounts, 1707-94.
[1365] Add. MSS., 9306, f. 68.
[1366] State Papers, Dom., lxxxv, 73.
[1367] Ibid., lxxxii, 13. The Admiralty was paying shipwrights 2s
2d a day.
[1368] Add. MSS., 9306, f. 132. When the Prince was rebuilt in
1640-1, £2571 was spent on gilding and £756 on carving (Add.
MSS., 9297, f. 351).
[1369] State Papers, Dom., ciii, 94.
[1370] The Sovereign, was however of 100, and the Resolution
and Naseby were of 80 guns. The armament of the London, a
second-rate of 1656, was: lower tier, 12 demi-cannon and 12
culverins; middle tier, 12 culverins and 12 demi-culverins;
forecastle 6, waist 4, and quarter-deck 6 demi-culverins (State
Papers, Dom., cl, 170).
[1371] Add. MSS., 22546, f. 42.
[1372] State Papers, Dom., ccxii, 115.
[1373] Add. MSS., 9302, f. 81.
[1374] State Papers, Dom., xxx, 77. But possibly there were
others at sea, although the contracts for hired ships do not show
any large tonnage.
[1375] Sir R. Slingsby, Discourse of the Navy.
[1376] Add. MSS., 9306, ff. 130, 160; 1655-7. Until about this
period ‘the Straits’ was the general term for the whole of the
Mediterranean; ‘the Straits’ mouth,’ and ‘the bottom of the Straits’
respectively describing the western and eastern portions. The
increase of commerce now necessitated more specific
descriptions of locality.
[1377] State Papers, Dom., 10th July 1652.
[1378] Add. MSS., 11,684, f. 3.
[1379] State Papers, Dom., 9th Dec. 1653.
[1380] Add. MSS., 9299, f. 171.
[1381] State Papers, Colonial, 19th Oct. 1654.
[1382] State Papers, Dom., 26th Feb. 1656; Elton to Admiralty
Commissioners. It is very likely that the message did reach
Cromwell.
[1383] The Parliamentary Navy Committee, which had
managed matters throughout the civil war, existed for some time
contemporaneously with the Admiralty Committee. But it soon lost
all authority.
[1384] State Papers, Dom., 12th March 1649.
[1385] The first Commissioners of the Admiralty and Navy were
Generals, Robert Blake, George Monk, John Disborowe, and
Wm. Penn; Colonels, Philip Jones, John Clerk, and Thos. Kilsey;

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More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology

“This is a wonderfully accomplished book in the tradition of grand theory. Risto

1 Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology and Social Theory 1

2 Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics and Phenomenological

3 Economy and Society in Semiotic Institutionalism 33

Conclusion: How Does Semiotic Institutionalism Overcome the

4 Power and Signification in Neostructuralism 65

5 Modernity and the Intersemiotic Condition 89

6 Modernity and the Articulation of the Gender System115

7 The Power of Institutions: The Case of Gendered Agency135

Bounded Rationality: Normative and Cultural-Cognitive

8 From Goffman to Semiotic Sociology157

9 Conclusion: Semiotic Sociology in the Field of Social

Risto Heiskala is Professor of Sociology at Tampere University, EU

Fig. 2.1 Meaning and project in Schutz’s phenomenology (Source:

Table 7.1 Theoretical approaches to human agency (based on Scott,

Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

conception of articulation, the pragmatist conception of interpretant and

levels are illustrated by a discussion of the problem posed by Big Case

is being loosened by technological innovations such as contraception and

frame Goffman. The frames are dramaturgical sociology; micro-revolution

published as a journal article with a very restrictive publication rights con-

Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics

The most common way to understand the relationship between structur-

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Saussure differentiated two types of relation that determine the identity

1. Structures are understood to be closed codes. They work like the

the other a derivative member of the opposition. This idea is based

A form of structuralism that makes these commitments, as well as most

1. There are (relatively) closed codes in semiosis, such as the system of

4. Binary relations may be considered an important type of relation in

instead of being ­completely arbitrary, the signs are biologically moti-

The seven alternative solutions outlined above give a preliminary

often direct us to problems already present in Saussure. A reminder of this

contrast, Saussure presents a two-fold conceptual split of the sign into

theme of arbitrariness versus motivation. An extreme interpretation of his

side of this interpretation of Peircean semiosis is that, in the light of the

‘transcendental phenomenology’. The aim of transcendental phenome-

(a) Interpretation of meaning as a reflective intentional act (directed in point

Fig. 2.1 Meaning and project in Schutz’s phenomenology (Source: Heiskala

defined an ‘institution’ as a form of habitualized behaviour in which the

the synthesis of structuralism and pragmatism, as developed in the previ-

Conclusion: Implications for Cultural

I have presented here a programmatic synthesis which can be crystallized

process of social semiosis. Hence, we need a neostructuralist semiotics,

phenomenological sociology. It is possible to read this formulation as a

1 Introduction: Towards Semiotic Sociology and Social Theory 1

2 Synthesis of Semiology, Semiotics and Phenomenological

3 Economy and Society in Semiotic Institutionalism 33

4 Power and Signification in Neostructuralism 65

5 Modernity and the Intersemiotic Condition 89

6 Modernity and the Articulation of the Gender System115

7 The Power of Institutions: The Case of Gendered Agency135

8 From Goffman to Semiotic Sociology157

9 Conclusion: Semiotic Sociology in the Field of Social

instead of being completely arbitrary, the signs are biologically moti-