A given position on the chessboard can be right or wrong in respect to the further course of the game (the game aiming at creating, inside the system of chess positions, cases of incompatibility and compatibility)· But a given position upon a given (token) chessboard not only becomes the expression whose content is the type position on a type of chessboard (case of sheer monoplanarity); it also becomes the expression whose content is the set of possible forecasting and therefore of accept-able instructions as to how go on in the game.
Thus systems and codes are different, but codes host institutional and instructional elements, and systems display the possibility of a correla-tional use of their elements, since a given syntactical event ‘means’ (or can be correlated to) one or more further events — and there are handbooks recording the most plausible (or correct) among the possible correlations.
In 1919, speaking of futurism, cubism, and nonrepresentational paint-ing, Jakobson substantially anticipates (without making recourse to semiotic terminology) what is better defined in Coup d’oeil sur le developpement de la semiotique (1974), that is, the function of internal and mutual referral, or renvoi, performed by all the elements of a purely syn-tactic sequence: “Significance underlies all the manifestations of the ‘ar-tifice”‘ (1980:25). In 1932, speaking of musicology and linguistics, Jakobson assigns the musical sounds to the kingdom of signs by a sort of Husserlian definition: the elements of music are not simple sounds (sonic substances) but count insofar as they are the goal of an intentional act. Sounds in music work as elements of a system and acquire a value according to specific criteria of pertinence: a primitive who makes perti-nent timbre instead of pitch perceives as the same melody what a European feels as two different melodies played on two different in-struments. In this essay (Jakobson 1932), the phonological concept of opposition is presented as a capital tool for the study of musical systems. It is from this essay, as well as from the investigations of the phonemic entities (Jakobson 1949), that a quarter of century later there springs the first significant interests in a linguistics approach to music.
For this reason Jakobson, even though admitting that there are purely syntactic systems such as chess (what Hjelmslev called symbolic systems, as opposed to the semiotic ones), immediately tries to find within them the possibility of an internal signification, or “the referral of a semiotic fact to an equivalent fact inside the same context. . . . The musical referral which leads us from the present tone to the anticipated or re-membered tone is replaced in abstract painting by a reciprocal referral of the factors in question” (1980:23—25). When there is, as in music, a language signifying itself, “diversely built and ranked parallelisms of structure enable the interpreter of any immediately perceived musical signals to infer and anticipate a further corresponding constituent (e.g., series) and the coherent ensemble of these constituents. . . . The code of recognized equivalences between parts and their correlation with the whole is to a great degree a learned, imputed set of parallelisms which are accepted as such in the framework of a given epoch, culture, or musical school” (1968:12).
5.6.2. S-codes and institutional codes
From this point of view, there is a difference between tautological s-codes (the system of numbers, the phonological code, and so on) and those s-codes that we have called institutional codes. Institutional codes (such as a body of laws) are s-codes, but of a specific kind. They do not follow an aletic logic but a deontic one, or a logic of preference.
Given the numerical sequence 5,10,15, the expected result is 20 if the sequence is a simple progression, 30 if its members are the addenda of an addition, 750 if its members are the multiplicands of a multiplication, and so on. Once the ‘topic’ (so to speak) of the series has been found, its expected further course will be as it must be.
Our expectations elicited by a given musical course, by the move of a chess game, and by the display of a given narrative function in the course of a fairy tale are of a different sort: they are open to failure. They can be more or less plausible but never mathematically sure.
Institutional codes as deontic system certainly imply a sort of calculus, but different from a logico-mathematical one. A system of behavioral instructions, such as a moral or etiquette code, involves acceptations and rejections, considers the possibility of violations, introduces imperatives, law reinforcements, and concessions, is open to possibility \ it is a calculus of a modal order.
In this sense, institutional codes such as the Italian Codice Civile (see 5.1.2 above), which seemed to display certain correlational features, display a further difference even in comparison with strictly correlational codes. If we assume that a lexicon is a correlational code matching ex-pressions with definitions, so that definiens and definiendum are absolutely reciprocable (but we have seen in chapter one of this book that such a conception betrays the very nature of linguistic signs), then the Penal Code does not provide definientia reciprocable with the definienda. When paragraph 580 prescribes that whoever leads someone to commit suicide deserves from one to five years of prison, this does not entail that who-ever deserves from one to five years has led someone to commit suicide.
The reason is not that such a code is a correlational one endowed with many synonymous expressions (of which a certain penalty is the constant ‘meaning’); it is that in such a code there is not a correlation between crime and punishment, but between a given crime and a given set of instructions. These instructions are open to circumstantial and contex-tual choices (the judge must evaluate whether the culprit deserves one or more years), but what is more relevant is that giving instructions means to prescribe the obligation (or the suggestion) to perform some-thing. As in other s-codes, if the judge does not respect the dictatum of the Penal Code, one does not say that he is lying but that be behaves improperly.
Nevertheless, institutional codes can be used in order to produce signification and to communicate something to somebody else. Let us consider four examples:
A. Given a certain institutional code, my obedience to its rules stands for my decision to appear faithful to the institution. Let us suppose that I . wish to pretend to be a Knight of the Holy Grail. I could do this by setting up an appropriate coat of arms (but in this case I lie by using an emblem-code) or by rescuing an unprotected virgin, even though I am not usually eager to defend the oppressed. The possibility of lying with the s-code is due to the fact that the rules of the chivalric code are not mandatory but are proairetic, based on a logic or preference, and conse-quently allow for their own rejection. Since the rules of chivalry are not obligatory for all, by following at least one of them I make believe that I accept them all. The noncompulsoriness of the acceptance of an s-code makes the acceptance of some of its instructions significant.
B. Let us now suppose that, in telephoning John in the presence of Charles, I want Charles to think that John asked me a question. I there-fore utter the statement No, I do not think so or Certainly, I’ll do it. In cheating Charles I refer to a conversational rule that he too shares, namely, that usually answers are reponses to questions, so that an answer is the sign (in the sense of the Stoic sêmeîon) that there was a previous question. By the consequent I have artificially and falsely produced, Charles is led to think of the most presumable antecedent. I am using in this case Charles’ presupposition that conversational rules are strictly normative for everybody, in order to make the consequents significant of the antecedents. In the case A I pretend to accept a system of nonob-ligatory rules (but a constrictive system once one has accepted it), and, in order to pretend, I observe one of its rules; in the case В I presuppose that everybody is bound to a system of quasi-obligatory rules and I pre-tend to observe one of them (while in fact I violate it). Case A is an example of lying about the rules, whereas case В is an example of lying with the rules.
С One can also lie by using improperly the modalities of a literary genre (which is an institutional system): one can begin a poem in an epic style and then betray the reader’s expectation by a sudden anticlimax, shifting thus from heroic to grotesque. One can put into play, in a fairy tale, an actor who apparently covers the position of the Helper and then reveals that he was the Adversary. One can supply a hero with the characteristics of the villain (hardboiled novel) or the villain with the characteristics of the hero (gothic novel). All С cases will be mixtures of A and В because, on the one hand, the noncompulsoriness of the rule permits one to pre-tend to accept it; on the other hand, the restrictiveness of the rules (once the genre has been blatantly selected) permits one to make the violation significant.
D· Besides all these cases of malicious or artistic lie, I can also make significant the blatant violation of the rules. I do not observe the rules of chivalric
