What makes a semiotician tick? SEMIOVOX’s Josh Glenn has invited his fellow practitioners in the field of commercial semiotics, from around the world, to answer a few revealing questions.

Olomouc (Czech Republic)…

SEMIOVOX

When you were a child/teen, how did your future fascination with symbols, cultural patterns, interpreting “texts,” and getting beneath the surface of daily life manifest itself?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

I was a very frustrated child, I wanted so badly to understand what is beneath the surface, but I had no clue about how to do it and I had no methods. Growing up in a small town in central Slovakia, the access to cultural and intellectual capital was limited. I was frustrated from my first experience in school, because it didn’t meet my expectations of what I would learn there and the dogmatic approaches in educational system in Slovakia also didn’t help. Later, as a teen, I discovered the power of love and surrendering to it, so my frustration was exchanged for ecstasy from being in love (for whatever that can mean for a 15-years-old). These two emotions remained for me associated with semiotics. Frustration first, then ecstasy and falling in love, was the linear temporal sequence for me in my first readings of Hjelmslev and Peirce.  

SEMIOVOX

Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

My very first encounter with semiotics was also marked by frustration and love. I was studying Italian philology at Palacký University in Olomouc and I was writing my BA thesis in literary science. It was about Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler and I had a different opinion about a specific interpretation of the novel’s ending than my supervisor had. My supervisor, Jiří Špička, was the country’s best expert on Italian literature. He was very kind in acknowledging that the difference in our opinions should not affect my thesis; he sent me to consult with Vít Gvoždiak, a renowned semiotic practitioner and expert on Jakobson. This was how I first learned about semiotics. I consulted with Vít, who supported my interpretation of the novel, and then, almost immediately after our first consultation, I enrolled in the post-graduate program in general linguistics, where Vít was lecturing — and of course, for the rest of my studies, I was helplessly in love with Vít and with semiotics.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

I was offered a university job during my PhD studies and I started lecturing in semiotics before finishing my degree. When I understood I could do for living what I enjoy the most, I went directly for it — and I haven’t ever regretted it. What I am still discovering and learning is the many different ways how to do semiotics for living. Until very recently I didn’t even think about commercial semiotics. Attending Semiofest in Porto, last year, helped me understand that academic semiotics is, paradoxically, more business-driven even than commercial semiotics. In recent months I have met so many authentic, honest people in commercial praxis with a genuine interest in semiotics and in understanding meaning. This has led me to become more active in commercial praxis myself — though I’m still just getting started. 

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

An almost child-like sense of curiosity; not being satisfied with simple answers and solutions; a need to understand what is beneath the surface; being “awake”; paying attention to details; playfulness and a sense for humor; and the ability to put things together in a rhizome-like structure.

These sorts of attributes are also valuable in daily activities like dressing well, cooking creatively, or building strong relationships. I’m sure most talented semioticians are also creative cooks and sharp dressers. And it’s important to us to build bridges and find rhizomatic connections between people; you can only become what you want to be if you understand — and embrace — what you are not.

Surprise, paradox, and creativity is part of everyday life for semioticians… so I would also add that a good semiotican is always surprising.

SEMIOVOX

What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

Allow me instead to talk about three versions of a single book.

Chance, Love, and Logic (1923, ed. Morris Cohen) is a posthumous collection of papers that C.S. Peirce published during his lifetime. The book exemplifies scientific semiotics, and embraces what Peirce calls “evolutionary love” — a cosmic principle of love throughout the universe — as part of his evolutionary theory. The advertisement that lured me into studying with Vít Gvoždiak used a Czech translation of this book’s title: “Náhoda, Láska, Logika.” We read a 1998 edition of Peirce’s book introduced by the Peirce scholar Kenneth Laine Ketner; the book represents my initial enchantment with semiotics. Recently I published my first single-author monograph, which applies Peirce’s “evolutionary love” concept to epigenetics and protein folding; I argue that Peirce was the first biolinguist.

SEMIOVOX

When someone asks you to describe what you do, what is your “elevator pitch”? How do you persuade a skeptical client to take a chance on using this tool?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

It’s about the modality of the question. I say, “Semiotics does not answer those questions starting with What? or How? or In what quantities? Instead, semiotics answers those questions starting with Why?” Classical market research or quantitative approaches will tell you, for example, that the target consumer prefers blue over red… but semiotics tells you why they prefer blue over red.

SEMIOVOX

What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

The more constraints, the more challenging the project is, and the more I enjoy it. I might go so far as to claim that creativity is defined by constraints. The lives of many great artists confirm this hypothesis; and Terrence Deacon’s theory [that constraint is a form of causality that can be generated intrinsically] suggests there may be a biological basis. Most of us, I think, have found that we are most productive during periods of stress and unease; if everything is perfect, we are unmotivated to make improvements. Perhaps another attribute of a good semiotician, then, is: perpetual, creativity-spurring dissatisfaction.

SEMIOVOX

What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

I’m frustrated that higher education is treated as a business, these days, prioritizing profit over academic values. Two sorts of semiotician can help address this problem. By integrating empirical evidence and grounding theories in the organic, the biosemiotician meets scientific standards — while maintaining a non-mechanistic and creative approach, thus demonstrating how to bridge the humanities and the natural sciences. And because they engage directly with the business world, commercial semioticians can exercise influence, around environmental and humanitarian crises for example, from within it.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

I did part of my studies in Bologna, where colleagues like Claudio Paolucci and Patrizia Violi keep alive Umberto Eco’s legacy of what they call “interpretive” semiotics — a combination of [Saussurean] structuralist theories and Peirce’s sign theory. I find this approach very refreshing. In my work, I seek to merge the two major traditions. In my writings, I argue that Peirce as the precursor of structuralist thinking; I also argue that structuralists are [Peircean] triadic thinkers. (One thinks, for example, of Louis Hjelmslev’s scheme-norm-usage trichotomy, an alternative to Saussure’s langue–parole dichotomy.) The world we live in is polarized enough already; it’s time for semiotics to get rid of any such polarization.

SEMIOVOX

What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?

L’UDMILA LACKOVÁ BENNETT

People can get furious if they see you not only doing something untraditional, but doing it well, and taking pleasure in it. This is especially true if they don’t understand what you actually do. If you encounter such people, pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate — it’s a sign of your success.

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