The semiotic concept of code: A study in concept formation

The point of departure of this study is a seemingly trivial question: how did “code” come to designate a key concept of linguistics and semiotics? It is generally held that the term migrated from information theory to linguistics in the early 1950s, and accordingly it followed its own path in the study of language and other semiotic systems. In that way, a new semiotic concept emerged.

This deceptively straightforward answer gives rise to some crucial questions. First, how did the migration of a technical term give rise to a linguistic concept? Was the new term adopted simply as a fashionable alternative label for a well-established concept (e.g. Saussure’s langue)? If not, how can we account for a concept formation solely in terms of terminological shifts? Moreover, how did a semiotic concept emerge out of a linguistic concept of code?

The present study will seek to address for the first time these questions in an attempt to shed new light to the emergence and early development of the semiotic concept of code, focusing on the work of the key figures (Eco, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss) in this neglected episode of the history of concepts in the humanities and social sciences.