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Semiotics of Emotion, with Implications foar the Writing Cure
By: Sundararajan & Kim on: Mon 04 of Jan, 2010 [16:55 UTC] (152 reads)

The writing cure, otherwise known as expressive writing, has an impressive track record since its introduction by Pennebaker more than two decades ago. Yet, there is an enormous gap between evidence and explanation for the phenomenon, a gap that is well articulated by Laura King who stated that “First, expressive writing has health benefits. Second, no one really knows why” (King, 2002, p. 119). The problem, we suggest, lies in the general neglect to gain a deeper understanding of the basic building blocks of the writing cure, namely language. This vacuum can be filled by the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce.

image from http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/peirce-semiosis.gif external link

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To shed some light on the connection between language and health, we cast Peircean semiotics in the framework of Shannon’s information theory, which suggests a correlation between the quality of information and that of energy: Information with a high degree of order and complexity renders energy accessible or useful, whereas entropy (the lack of information) renders energy inaccessible or useless. To the extent that energy applies to metabolism of the body, the degree of complexity of information may have implications for the quality of health. The theorist who would support our interpretation of Shannon is Peirce, who claims that “the word or sign which man uses is the man himself . . . . Thus my language is the sum total of myself” (1931-58, Vol.5, paragraph 314, emphasis in the original). To the extent that the sign user is the sign she uses, the quality of the sign one uses matters probably in a physical way. How do we measure the quality (complexity, or degree of organization) of information? One feasible measure of complexity is Sabelli’s (2005) bipolar (both positive and negative) feedback-- coexistence or alternation of synergy and antagonism—which generates information. The notion of bipolar feedback is consistent with Shannon’s conceptualization of an ideal code, which consists of an optimal blend of two opposite tendencies--variety and accuracy—a unique property that is also displayed by vertebrate DNA and human language (Campbell, 1982). Bipolar feedback can be further elaborated by the triadic circuitry of the sign, which consists of the integration of two antagonistic movements of a sign: upshifting and downshifting (Lee, 1997). The upshifting movement to a symbolic level is experience distant, a price it pays to capitalize on the generation of variety through interpretations. The downshifting movement is experience near, as it privileges fidelity to experience at the expense of cognitive elaboration. Optimal sign function requires a dynamic integration of these opposing tendencies. An efficient sign, therefore, is capable of producing equivalent interpretations, or in other words, reliable variety which is the hallmark of redundancy in information, according to Shannon.

This paper is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the semiotic criteria of an efficient sign that can serve as measure of the degree of organization or complexity of information. The second part derives from Peircean semiotics predictions of health consequences of different types of language use in emotion expressions. These predictions of language use are translated into a language analysis program, SSWC (Sundararajan- Schubert Word Count) (Sundararajan & Schubert, 2005), with 15 categories of language use. In the last section, supporting evidence of the health consequences of language use is reported in two empirical studies that utilized SSWC to analyze texts of expressive writing by college students and children, respectively.

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