Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and the Development of Semiotic Studies in Indonesia

Asian Journal of Media and Communication E-ISSN: 2579-6119, P-ISSN: 2579-6100 Volume 3, Number 2, October 2019 Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School and the Development of Semiotic Studies in Indonesia Muzayin Nazaruddin Department of Communication Universitas Islam Indonesia Abstract This paper proposes the importance of the infusion of Tartu-Moscow Semiotics School (TMSS) into the development of semiotic studies in Indonesia. Semiotic studies in Indonesia have mostly departed from the ideas of Peirce, Saussure, and Barthes, while TMSS has not been recognized by Indonesian scholars. The paper proposes two concepts of TMSS, namely ‘text’ and ‘semiosphere’, which would significantly enhance semiotic studies in Indonesia. Indonesian scholars usually regard text as a concrete artefact, causing overgeneralization that every artefact is text, as well as oversimplification that every text is concrete artefact. Semiotic studies in Indonesia tend to exclude text as the object study from its cultural context and to analyse it in its individuality. While, TMSS defines text based on its meaningfulness, authority, and cultural functions. Besides its function as message carrier, TMSS proposes three functions of text, namely creative, poetic, and memory functions. These functions are connection points between a text and its wider cultural and historical contexts and its dynamic aspects. Finally, the concept of semiosphere, an abstract model in which semiosis occurs and outside of which semiosis cannot exist, would drive a holism perspective, avoiding the tendency to analyse the discrete text in its individuality. Keywords: Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School; text; text function; semiosphere; sign system. 1. Introduction Literature was the first discipline that brought semiotics into Indonesia. Probably the first book of literature dealing with semiotic approach was “Sastra dan Ilmu Sastra: Pengantar Teori Sastra (Literature and Literary Science: Introduction to the Theory of Literature)” written by A. Teeuw (1984), a Dutch scholar specialized in Indonesian Literature. In this book, he fundamentally applied semiotic approach to analyze literary works. According to him, literature cannot be scientifically studied without involving its socio-cultural aspects, namely viewing literature as an act of communication. In this perspective, literature is a sign or a semiotic symptom (Teeuw, 1984, p. 42), which could be studied in some of its aspects, such as the position of the author, literary text itself as a structure, the reader position and reading acts, the relation between literary texts and the literary system, and the relation between literary texts and the reality (Teeuw, 1984, pp. 42-57). Further, semiotic studies in Indonesia have departed from the traditions of Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, and Roland Barthes. These three figures are very popular among scholars in Indonesia. While, TartuMoscow Semiotics School (later will be abbreviated as TMSS), as one of the most important semiotic traditions in the world, has not been recognized by Indonesian scholars. It is very difficult to find any description of TMSS in the Indonesian semiotic texts or the application of TMSS in the semiotic studies in 51 Volume 3, Number 2, October 2019 Indonesia. Even though, TMSS ideas have widely been accepted and discussed within the global semiotic circles. This school has also the ‘Sign Systems Studies’, the oldest international semiotic periodical, established in 1964 by Juri Lotman, one of the founding fathers of the school. This paper aims to show the importance of the infusion of TMSS into the development of semiotic studies in Indonesia. We may ask, what kind of discourse or perspective could TMSS enrich semiotic studies in Indonesia? This paper proposes two concepts of TMSS that could significantly enhance semiotic studies in Indonesia, namely ‘text’ and ‘semiosphere’. 2. Text and its functions In Indonesia, semiotics is generally regarded as an approach or method to analyse cultural texts, including media texts. For Indonesian experts, text is understood as a concrete artefact, such as painting, written text, photo, dance, and a variety of other concrete artefacts. Here, the basic characteristic of text is determined by its form. At glance, it confirms the notion of text in TMSS as a concrete object. Lotman and Piatigorsky (1978, p. 233) said, “Text may, however, be defined – if not logically, at least for working purposes – by pointing to a concrete object having its own internal features which cannot be deduced from anything else apart from itself.” However, in the further discussion, we may ask, is every concrete artefact text? In this point, the distinction of text and non-text in TMSS is very important, since it is very difficult to find the topic of how to define text in the Indonesian semiotic books. Even, this unclear definition of text has somehow made overgeneralization that every artefact is text. The TMSS emphasises the characteristic of text from its ‘truthworthiness and cultural significance’ (Lotman & Piatigorsky, 1978). In this perspective, not every utterance, or even concrete artefact, is text. Only something truthfulness and have certain cultural function could be considered as text. In a written culture, this distinction is related to the ‘oral-written’ differentiation, in which a meaningful thing will be written down, or generally expressed and fixed via certain material forms. According to TMSS, “Not every message is worthy of being written down, but everything written down takes 52 on a particular cultural significance, becomes a text” (Lotman & Piatigorsky, 1978, p. 234). In the contemporary notion, this assumption should be further discussed, since it seems that nowadays not every written artefact takes a cultural significance. For example, we may discuss, does every Facebook, Twitter, or another social media status have a cultural significance? In my opinion, we should identify the degree from merely personal to cultural importance. Perhaps, every social media status has personal, but not cultural importance. On the other side, especially within the oral tradition, not everything that has cultural significance is written down. There are so many examples of this phenomenon. Just to give an illustration, the oral statement given by the jurukunci (caretaker) of Mt. Merapi during the eruption crisis, whether the local people should evacuate or not, is in fact more significant and truthfulness than the written order from the Indonesian government that always ask local people on the slopes of Mt. Merapi to evacuate immediately (Nazaruddin, 2013). In this case, we may infer that the oral statements delivered by the cultural leader are sometimes much more significant and having the ‘textual authority’ (Lotman and Piatigorsky, 1978), comparing to the formal written norms by the government. Thus, the identification which one is text and which other is not is very i (...truncated)