Signs and Symbols of Your Culture and Society

Semiotics and Positive Deviance

            Every day you are a semiotician. You read the signs and symbols of your culture and society. The stop signs, the hand signals and body language people share with you or didn’t mean to communicate with you. Semiotics is an important aspect of everyday life, though most people do not realize it. According to Merriam-Webster, Semiotics is “a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols that deals especially with their function in both artificially constructed and natural languages and comprises syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.”[1] It involves every aspect of human communication. At the best of times communications are difficult, Hall writes, “One problem of semiotics is that the message that arrives at the destination is not always the same one that has been sent.”[2] Semiotics is critical in the understanding of Positive Deviance. The reading and interpreting of practices and strategies or signs as Daniel Chandler would insist may help communicate deviant activities. Concerning the ability to interpret deviant semiotics on an individual level Chandler refers to semioticians, Lakoff and Johnson’s conclusions. He asserts,

They argue that (as with metaphor) metonymic substitution may influence our thoughts, attitudes and actions by focusing on certain aspects of a concept and suppressing other aspects which are inconsistent with the metonym . . . . When we think of Picasso, we are not just thinking of a work art alone, in and of itself. We think of it in terms of its relation to the artist, this is, his conception of art, his technique, his role in art history, etc." I wonder if their "etc." would include his ear! Just by mentioning, Picasso, many aspects of his art and his personal story come to mind, but it may not be the same thought.[3]

            Semiotics in relationship to the Positive Deviance Approach is similar to beauty in the eye of the beholder. What is beautiful to one person is not necessarily beautiful to another, so semiotics is the art of interpretation of signs and symbols. Identifying Positive Deviance practitioners requires the ability to observe even the slightest variances in practices and strategies. The importance of semiotics in the Positive Deviance Approach is the ability to identify the practitioners of positive deviance through the nuances amid their practices. The ability to discern the difference between the conventional wisdom of a group and the positive deviance practices and strategies is crucial to determining viable solutions amid the group.

            The signs of positive deviant practices and strategies in a cultural setting may not always be obvious. Dr. William Seidman and Michael McCauley assert, “Most people think of a deviant as someone who does bad things . . . there are also positive deviants . . . positive deviants transcend the conventional wisdoms, discovering new and innovative ways to function without creating conflict.”[4] The semiotics of the Positive Deviance Approach is revealed by extraordinary results. Dr. Sternin views positive deviants as people who are willing to work outside of conventional wisdom and use unconventional means to obtain the culturally accepted goals. Concerning Dr. Sternin’s observations about the semiotics of Positive Deviance, he writes, “Half out of desperation, half in inspiration . . . there are individuals whose exceptional behavior or practices enable them to get better results than their neighbors with the same exact resources.”[5]

            The semiotics of the Positive Deviance Approach appears as a willingness not to be limited by the conventional wisdom of a context or cultural group. This willingness usually is not seen as creating conflict in a cultural setting though it might be viewed with skepticism or with cultural ambivalence. The practitioner’s approach is self-initiative and innovation as practices and strategies that lead to a change in behavior. The behavioral changes result in the accepted goal of the culture. Are you willing to make a difference? Could we be the possible answer to an intractable issue?

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[1] Semiotics. (2009). In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved December 14, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Semiotics.

[2] Sean Hall, This Means This, This Means That: A User’s Guide to Semiotics (London: L. King Pub., 2007). 32.

[3] Metonymic substitution is a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”) Merriam-Webster; Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics, 2nd ed. (London ;;New York: Routledge, 2007).

[4] William Seidman and Michael McCauley, “Positive Deviants Rule,” http://www.cerebyte.biz/articles/PositiveDeviantsRule.pdf (accessed December 15, 2009)

[5] Dorsey, 285.