Larry’s Reviews > Rethinking Symbolism > Status Update

Symbolicity is a property of conceptual representations of acts or utterances that puts them in quotes. The mime is like the sacrificer. Just like proverbs and figurative speech is neither about words, or the world. But then it’s not clear to me why sperber maintains that symbols have no meaning. Figurative speech certainly does. This is a great book but it could use a little more space to develop its arguments

“Despite some statements to the contrary, symbolism conceived in this way [by the Structuralist] is not a means of encoding information, but a means of organizing it. A symbolic opposition must not be replaced by an interpretation, but placed in an organization of which it constitutes a crucial element.”

Sperber makes a number of claims in ch 2: that symbols have no meaning in the semantic sense of the term, that symbols function without being interpreted, that the (semiological) interpretation is itself symbolic, and that it’s impossible to say what class of things symbols are (although he doesn’t try very hard). I’m quite surprised by the informal tone and the rapidity of the arguments