Interrogating Sociomateriality: An Integrative Semiotic Framework for IS Research

John Mingers, Kent Business School

Leslie Willcocks, LSE

LSE Seminar June 17th 2014

Overview

• What is sociomateriality?• Developing the framework:

1. Underlying philosophy: critical realism2. Peirceian Semiotics3. Information and meaning4. Embodied cognition5. Habermas’s theory of communicative

action• Integrative semiotic framework• Illustrative examples• Critique of sociomateriality• Conclusion

Interrogating Sociomiality: An Integrative Semiotic Framework for IS Research

Professor John MingersKent Business SchoolUKAugust 2013

Sociomateriality The two most distinctive characteristics of humans as a

species are: The ability to use language to co-ordinate actions: communication –

which is primarily social based on meaning and signification The ability to develop tools to shape the environment: technology –

which is generally realised physically Within information systems this is recognised as “ICT” –

technology applied to information and communications. But what is the relationship between the social and the

material?A. One system is dominant – e.g., technological determinists vs social

construction of technology (SCOT)B. Two interacting systems – e.g., socio-technical systemsC. The two systems are so intertwined they cannot be separated –

sociomateriality, e.g., actor network theory, Barad, Orlikowski

“There is no social that is not material and no material that is not social”(Orlikowski 2007, 1437)

“In other words, entities (whether humans or technologies) have no inherent properties, but acquire form, attributes, and capabilities through their interpenetration. This is a relational ontology that presumes the social and the material are inherently inseparable.”

(Orlikowski and Scott, 2008, p. 455).

“Agencies of observation … signals the inseparability of the material and semiotic apparatuses .. The material and semiotic apparatuses form a nondualistic whole”(Barad 1996, p. 172)

“… on my agential realist elaboration, phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of ‘observer’ and ‘observed’; rather phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially interacting ‘components’”(Barad 2003, p. 815)

Developing the Framework I: Underlying Philosophy: Critical Realism

We are dealing with distinct ontological domains – the social/cognitive and the material – which critical realism can accept (Bhaskar, Archer, Mingers)

Accepts the ontological reality of a variety of different entities, physical, social, cognitive with different forms of epistemological access Transitive and intransitive domains of science The Real, the Actual and the Empirical Generative rather than Humean causality Epistemic but not judgemental reality

Developing the Framework II: Semiotics Semiotics or semiology: the study of signs and systems of

signification where a sign is an event, an object, a symbol or a behavior that represents something other than itself.

Signs depend upon a shared set of meanings within a particular community and are the basis of all communication, whether linguistic or not.

Semiotics studies the processes that lead signs to have particular meanings, and the ways in which such meanings are communicated and have effects. Thus, semiotics can be seen as the most fundamental of the social sciences since it underlies all communication and social action. Saussure: rests on a dyadic relationship between signifier and signified Peirce: involves a triadic relationship between signifier (representamen),

signified (interpretant) and referent (object)

The sign

Representamenicon, index, symbol

Interpretant• Immediate interpretant – direct meaning

of the sign• Dynamic interpretant – the effect of the

meaning on an interpreter• Final interpretant – the eventual effect

after unlimited semiosis

Object• Immediate object as

represented within the sign• Dynamic object as implied

by or generating the sign

sense

refe

renc

e

Figure 1 Pierce’s Semiotic Traingle

Further Developments in Semiotics

Charles Morris characterised semiotics in terms of three dimensions: Syntactics – the relations between signs, rules of language

Semantics – the relations between signs and their objects and interpretants

Pragmatics – the origin, use and effects of signsThis was later used by Habermas in the theory of communicative action

Roman Jakobson saw that Saussure’s distinction between the syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes of meaning were essentially similarity and contiguity or metaphor and metonymy

Also developed a model of communication with six components: Addresser, addressee, message, context, code and physical or

psychological contact

Applications in Business and ICT

Stamper’s semiotic framework – organizational semiotics Material (physical), empirical (transmission), syntactic, semantic,

pragmatic, social

Semiotic analyses of ICT as a communicational tool – Web 2.0 (Warschauer), hypertextuality in the WWW (Tredinnick), Tian (e-mail use), information (Mingers, Beynon-Davies)

HCI – computer semiotics (Andersen), semiotic engineering (de Souza, O’Niell)

Marketing (Mick, Arnold, Harvey), letters to shareholders (Fiol), decoding regulation reviews (Cooper).

Developing the Framework III – Information and Meaning

How do signs and symbols come to have meaning?We need to distinguish between information and meaning. Following several authors (Dretske, Mingers, Floridi), “(semantic) information is the propositional content of a sign or message” – that which is implied by the existence of the sign.” This means that information is objective and true for it to be information (as opposed to misinformation or disinformation)“Meaning” has two senses: (i) the system of meanings (connotations) that allows the signs to have a

sense, and that basic sense (direct interpretant)(ii) The particular meaning (import) that the signs have for the receiver

(dynamic interpretant)So, the meaning for an individual is partly subjective and leads eventually to (in)action

Illustrative example – Khipu and the Inka Buraucracy (Beynon Davies 2012)

How does meaning get created and translated into actions (embodied cognition)? And how do actions and information get transmitted (technology)?

The process by which information is converted to meaning and that then results in action has been called embodied cognition (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Mingers, Maturana, Dourish, O’Neill), what Peirce called “habits”

“There is not thought and language … Expressive operations take place between thinking language and speaking thought; … It is not because they are parallel that we speak; it is because we speak that they are parallel … I do not speak of my thoughts; I speak them and what is between them.”(Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 18, orig. emphasis)

Illustrative examples: work on human computer interaction e.g O’Neill 2008 embodimant and presence in virtual worlds e.g Schulze 2010

Developing the Framework IV – Meaning and Embodiment

“It is rather stormy” Meaning 1: Understanding, Immediate interpretant

Meaning 2: Connotation, Dynamical interpretant

Meaning 3: Intention, Final interpretant

Meaning 2: Generation, Dynamical object

Meaning 1: Action, Immediate object“Iet’s not go today then”

Immediate object: wanting to know how the weather is

Dynamical object: the addresser has looked out of the window

Addresser Addressee

Embodied cognition

Figure 2 Stages in the Interpretation of and Response to Signs

Developing the Framework V – Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action

Habermas argues that communications (speech acts) raise validity claims with respect to three different worlds: The material world: truth about matters of fact in the objective world The social world: rightness about agreed norms of behaviour in our

social world The personal world: sincerity about feelings and beliefs in my personal

world These are analytical distinctions but nevertheless point to domains with

substantively different ontological and epistemological characteristics

Integrative framework: Semiosis and the Three Worlds

Semiosis

Personal

Social Material

Embodim

ent

“Sociomateriality”

Soc

iatio

n /s

truct

urat

ion

Intent, Import

Connotation, reproduction Representation,

transmission

Figure 3 The Relations Between Semiosis and the Three Worlds

Illustrating the Potential of the Framework (1)1. Trip Advisor – study by Scott and Orlikowski, 2009 on-line travel community with reviews and opinions

The study asks questions from a social-materiality perspective but very pertinent questions can also be asked from the personal-material,and the personal-socia, and how these relate to semiosis e.g.:• How do individuals relate to the technology?• How do they use it? Why do they use it?• Is it only extreme experiences that get recorded?• Level of belief on accuracy and validity?• What determines personal use?• How does the personal influence the social facts created?• Are actual experiences more convincing than statistical data?• Does social media change meaning, the flow of informaiton, and create

ratings/assessment as facts?• What is the role of signs in creating a continually remade and contested social and

personal reality?

Illustrating the Potential of the Framework (2)2. Dairy Production Plant – Kallinikos, 2011Workings of a full computerized dairy production plant, and the role of semiotics

Documents changes in the nature of work, personal-social-technological interactions

Records how process operators seemingly needing to turn their back on the physicalProduction process and devote themselves instead to the task of examining the very structure of signs, codes and symbol schemes whereby physical relationships were mediated and regulated.

Fragmented system of signs and codes that saw little relationship between token and referent.

Critique of Sociomateriality

Inherently self-contradictory: how can we discuss “humans” and “technologies” if they are inherently inseparable?

Reduces two distinct but interacting structures to a duality that loses sight of both its components

Lack of depth ontology which allows for emergent properties generated by the interaction of lower level mechanisms

Reduces and emasculates the active agency of subjects without whom neither society nor technology would occur (the personal world)

Reduces the role of semiosis as the process and the mechanism through which meaningful human interaction occurs. Technology is both the medium of semiosis, but also a condition for and the result of semiosis.

Conclusion

Semiosis becoming central in conditions of accelerating virtualization, abstractness, and modes of representation driven by advances in technologies, media and software.

‘Sociomateriality is always being enacted, performed and in the making. But… two other relationships – of sociation and embodiment – also need to be addressed on a more precise basis, and semiosis needs to play a central, explicit, rather than implied, part in the study of contemporary ICTS’ – Mingers and Willcocks, 2014

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