The Semiotics and Politics of Perspective

ABSTRACT: In addition to providing an overview of the papers of this special issue, this introduction theorizes perspective as a semiotic, and thus political, phenomenon for sociocultural and linguistic anthropological study. As we argue, despite the term being closely linked to visualist and spatialist conceptions (if “extended” in capacious ways to diverse phenomena), perspective is best thought of as equally at play in all types of semiosis; as such, we ask how different modalities and media, from visual images in film to oral speech and written literature to face-to-face interaction and architecture, are underwritten by a common semiotics of perspective. Following Peirce and his uptake in linguistic anthropology, we distinguish and articulate perspective as an intrinsic function of the sign relation (as interpretant), as an emergent discourse-level precipitate (as entextualized), and as the result of inter-discursive processes of conventionalization and institutionalization (as enregistered). In doing so, we stress the capacity of perspective to itself become an object of reflexive focus, and thus of political action and authority (contestation, naturalization, reform).