This article explores how Paolo Fabbri contrasts the semiology of Roland Barthes with the semiotics of Umberto Eco, identifying two paradigms that define much of contemporary semiotic thought: one rooted in ideological critique, the other in inferential processes of meaning-making.
In outlining the two main directions of contemporary semiotics, Paolo Fabbri identifies two distinct yet profoundly influential paradigms: on the one hand, Roland Barthes’s semiology, and on the other, Umberto Eco’s semiotics. Each develops its own conception of signification, shaping different theoretical trajectories within the semiotic field.
Barthes: Semiology as Ideological Critique
According to Fabbri, Barthesian semiology is primarily configured as a critique of ideological connotations. Natural language is viewed as the system capable of rendering all other systems significant, thereby asserting a supremacy that becomes a form of codification and control. Semiology thus becomes a tool for exposing the ideological encrustations projected by the bourgeoisie onto languages.
However, while effective as a critical practice, this approach, Fabbri argues, tends to become a kind of “trans-linguistics”: a linguistics that claims to translate all other semiotic systems into its own categories, thereby reducing the diversity of languages to the verbal paradigm. As a result, Barthesian semiology risks being drawn back into the old humanistic tradition, which interprets discourses through the rhetorical figures of antiquity.
Eco: Signs, Classification, and Inference
Umberto Eco, by contrast, proposes another path. He distances himself from the Saussurean line and embraces certain insights from Charles Sanders Peirce. In particular, Eco reintroduces two key ideas:
- the need for a classification of signs;
- the modelling of inference as the basis of semiotic functioning.
From this perspective, the sign is not merely a coded element within a closed system but a point from which a chain of interpretation unfolds — an interaction between expression and content. The inferential model thus allows signification to be conceived in dynamic and processual rather than static and lexical terms.
The Risks According to Fabbri
In assessing these two paradigms, Fabbri highlights two theoretical risks that stem from them:
- The first is the tendency to treat signs as lexical elements, as if every system of signification were merely a collection of signs. In reality, Fabbri argues, signs should be seen as points of intersection among underlying systems rather than as isolated units.
- The second is the idea that signification depends exclusively on codes, neglecting the processes, strategies, and generative levels of meaning.
For Fabbri, these critiques amount to an invitation to bring semiotics back to the study of systems and processes of signification, overcoming both codification and representation.
Bibliographic reference: Stefano Traini, Le due vie della semiotica: teorie strutturali e interpretative