Critical Realism and Semiosis

TLDR

This goes well beyond the question of whether reasons can be causes to include more basic issues of the performativity of semiosis and the relationship between interpretation (verstehen) and causal explanation (erklA¤ren). The paper investigates how critical realism can incorporate semiosis into its theories of social relations, structuration, and agency, arguing for mutual enrichment and demonstrating benefits for critical semiotic analysis. The authors employ an evolutionary structuration framework, illustrating how semiosis can be integrated into critical realism’s accounts of structure and agency, and analyze semiotic and extra‑semiotic effects arising from textual practices with brief examples. The study recommends articulating discursive and extra‑discursive aspects of social relations, highlighting implications for critical realism.

Abstract

This paper explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis (or the intersubjective production of meaning). It argues that critical realism must integrate semiosis into its account of social relations and social structuration. This goes well beyond the question of whether reasons can be causes to include more basic issues of the performativity of semiosis and the relationship between interpretation (verstehen) and causal explanation (erklA¤ren). The paper then demonstrates how critical realism can integrate semiosis into its accounts of dialectic of structure and agency through an evolutionary approach to structuration. It also demonstrates how critical semiotic analysis (including critical discourse analysis) can benefit from critical realism. In the latter respect we consider the emergence of semiotic effects and extra-semiotic effects from textual practices and give two brief illustrations of how this works from specific texts. The paper concludes with more general recommendations about the articulation of the discursive and extra-discursive aspects of social relations and its implications for critical realism.