Brain, Mind and the Signifying Body

Paul J. Thibault is Professor in Linguistics and Media Communication, Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway. Professor M. A. K. Halliday (b. 1925) was Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney until his retirement and has taught as a Visiting Professor around the world. As a self-styled 'generalist' he has published in many branches of linguistics.

• Foreword by M. A. K. Halliday; Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Sensori-Motor Activity, Movement, and Social Meaning-Making; 3. Body Dynamics, Meaning-Making, and Scale Heterogeneity; 4. The Semiotic Basis of Consciousness; 5. The Metafunctional Character of Consciousness; 6. Brain, Meaning, and Consciousness.

"Paul Thibault develops a densely theoretical discussion of cognitive and ecosocial components of semiotics that could be viewed as a cognitive science perspective on work undertaken in modern times from Charles Sanders Peirce to Roland Barthes. Published in Continuum's wide-ranging Open Linguistics Series, Brain, Mind, and the Signifying Body is "linguistic" in the looser sense insofar as Thibault's interest is in self-organizing, complex semiotic systems but has language (in its broadest sense) as its basis. Yet, Thibault adds a biological/ ecological focus to this investigation because, as he contends, "language in all of its facets is intrinsic to our biological make-up"(281-282)... Citing work by Wilson (1998) and others, Thibault argues that ‘recent developments in the theory of complex dynamic open systems show the importance of developing a theory of social semiosis in which the socio-cultural and the biological domains of inquiry are brought into a new dialogue with each other...' In his ‘Preface' he notes that it is crucial for semiotics to develop a perspective that takes into account collectively crucial consideration of social interaction, environmental factors, and the body in order to emphasize facets of semiosis that have been seen as immaterial by virtue of their very materiality... By disregarding the more conventional perspective of ostensibly logical impact, Thibault arguably creates a decidedly different view of semiotic systems here. Drawing upon Togeby (2000) and making good on Halliday's contention in his Foreword, Thibault observes that "we need to develop a new discourse for talking and thinking about the ways in which brain, body, and ecosocial semiotic environment are embedded in and are functioning participants in higher-scalar systems that link all three components in complex, hierarchically organized and non-linear interactions across the many levels of relations and space-time scales that are involved"(17)... Given the far-ranging density of Brain, Mind, and the Signifying Body, it is hardly surprising that Thibault would need more room to develop it further, and the companion volume, Agency and Consciousness in Discourse: Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System (2005), is designed to enable him to do jus that. In particular, Thibault follows up this investigation by focusing on the ways in which the individual subject exercises agency in relation to consciousness. His attention remains on the procedures of social semiotic interplay as it is mediated and created by the body-brain complex. In Brain, Mind, and the Signifying Body, Thibault essentially responds to what he sees as "the need for a theory which can discuss different scalar levels that are implicated in the organism's transactions with the affordances in its environment" (14). And his assertion of the significance of this enterprise to identify connections between conscious humans, their bodies, and their world seems wholly justifiable "The functional and contextual basis of systemic-functional theory will prove to be an ideal conceptual and analytical tool for developing these links"(48)." Scott Simpkins, The Semiotic Review of Books, May 2007