Introduction

Framing of the Study

To develop a biosemiotic framework for a descriptive phenomenology, the paper inter-relates different semiotic perspectives. Firstly, biosemiotics considers sign as a micro- and Umwelt as a macro-level and is, as a young discipline, still developing concepts to connect the two. Apart from habit (inherited from Peirce, see Sebeok, 2001, p. 50, 92; Pickering, 2016), such concepts are rarely explicitly addressed in scholarship. There should be semiotic levels in the in-between region, mediating and regulating between micro and macro.

We are confronted with a challenge of levels, not only for comprehending, but for establishing an evolutionary perspective:

Higher stages develop from lower ones and cannot be understood without taking these into account. […] The properties of the lower stages do not in all cases provide sufficient means to understand what’s going on at the higher level. Evolutionary thinking not only emphasizes continuity and gradation, but also brings out the importance of emergence. Higher stages can develop a logic that includes factors irreducible to those already existing at lower stages. (Welsch, 2004, p. 12.)

A more finely-grained differentiation of levels would allow for understanding animal behaviour and communication as neither strictly top-down, where the environment dictates local interpretation, nor bottom-up, where the animal is entirely unconstrained by environment. Unravelling the meso-levels points to the intrinsic phenomenological mereology of biosemiotics: that biosemiotic analysis is a consideration of how parts couple into wholes (Cobley & Stjernfelt, 2015). Analytically increasing the number of interrelated levels and aspects may enrich the semiotic toolbox for empirical studies of how elements on lower levels form phenomenological wholes (arguably complementing Campbell et al., 2019).

For this, we introduce the interrelated concepts utterance and genre, as proposed in a semiotic framework and applied in animal communication meta-studies (Ongstad, 2019, 2021, 2022a, b, 2023). To utter is to address meaningful structures to an other. Utterances tend to be stereotyped and recognised in a community as kinds of communication or genres. We return to definitions and descriptions in Sect. 2. An impetus behind incorporating these two concepts is that biosemiotics may benefit from bridging the conceptual gap between sign and Umwelt, and hence improve the analytical instruments by which semiotics studies meaning-making in a phenomenological perspective.

Five other concepts are outlined in detail. One of them is habit (Pickering, 2016; Stjernfelt, 2016), which we compare with genre. Another is life-world (Habermas, 1984, 1985, 1998), a macro concept which is matched against Umwelt. To refine this framework, in inspiration of Campbell et al. (2019), we also relate to affordance (Gibson, 1979), scaffolding (Hoffmeyer, 2015a, b; Cobley &Stjernfelt, 2016), and event (Stables, 2023). These three and the six mentioned above concepts make up a semiotic repertoire, which can be operationalized for studying animal and educational communication (see Stables, 2016), which in turn may contribute to a more empirically oriented semiotic phenomenology.

The Discursive Line of Argument

Dominating biosemiotic theory-building, sign and Umwelt created the impression that these two levels are directly connected poles. We interpret this special issue’s editors’ initiative as an invitation to extend the biosemiotic conceptual landscape as an opportunity to reduce this gap with new levels and aspects. Our ambition (see also Campbell et al., 2019; Olteanu, 2021) of integrating socio- and biosemiotic concepts leads to several challenges. Firstly, although an utterance is made by signs, these are in a socio-semiotic perspective dependent, implying that signs and utterances are seen as operating on different levels. These positionings may appear to clash with the Peircean view that the whole Universe is a sign (CP 5.448) but can be reconciled with Peirce’s view that signs operate within Universes of Discourse (CP 3.174).

Secondly, at the ‘third’ level, genre, there is a specific conceptual challenge, as suggested by recent notions such as Wittgenstein-inspired sign games (Brier, 2015) and Hallidayian macro-functions (Haentjens, 2018). More important, though, is habit (CP 5.491, 5.494; Kull, 2022). We therefore discuss to which degree genre and habit are terms for the same concept. While this kind of ‘competition’ seems new for biosemiotics, discussions of meso- and macro-concepts such as register, habitus, genre, and discourse are common-place in social and communication studies.

Thirdly, lifeworld and Umwelt may seemingly refer to similar phenomena, but a close inspection reveals significant differences. Besides, and fourthly, of all the four proposed levels this ‘final’ level is most directly associated with phenomenology. To bring new insights to biosemiotic phenomenologies, the article discusses how socio-semiotics can contribute to this enterprise.

Fifthly, and finally, any framework developed for empirical and theoretical analyses presupposes some precise analytical tools. Thus, a framework generated for operationalization must be able to increase its conceptual delicacy, to use a Hallidayian term. To be specific about its applicability, we relate our proposal to semiotic methods that employ the concepts of affordance, scaffold, and event.

The set utterance-genre-lifeworld has been applied both in educational and animal communication studies (Ongstad, 2019, 2021, 2022a, b, 2023). The set event-affordance-scaffold is explicitly related to Peircean semiotics and has not been connected to utterance-genre-lifeworld. In the following sections, we note how scaffolding, affordance, and event relate to utterance-genre-lifeworld.

These five clarifications constitute the article’s line of argument. There is no single specific issue that calls for one final conclusion, but rather an interrelated series of challenges to be met as a consequence of the integrative ambition. Far from proposing a new theory directly and generally applicable in empirical studies, we offer an interrelated cluster or set of concepts. This can increase both empirical applicability and phenomenological awareness created by the explicit sign-based communicational view we recommend, one that bridges bio- and socio-semiotics by perceiving all levels, aspects, and processes as interrelated and communicational.

This conceptual study aims at an integrative framework that can be applied in empirical analysis. As stated, a main focus is level, which is not static, but extending by integration of aspects and processes. Consequently, we propose a taxonomy of four semiotic levels (sign, utterance, genre or habit, lifeworld or Umwelt), from micro to macro. Parallels and differences between sign and utterance, genre and habit, lifeworld and Umwelt are discussed. We start with sign and arrive at the Husserlean-Habermasian lifeworld level. This grip generates a cohesive semiotic and communicational basis for discussing overarching phenomenological functions. We draw on insights on phenomenologies less evident in the exposition of the other levels. A main question is whether there are significant phenomenological differences between a communication-based understanding of lifeworld and a sign-oriented perception of Umwelt.

Utterance as a Key Semiotic Level in Open Communicational Systems

Defining the Utterance as a Level Integrating Five Aspects

The claim that an organism cannot not communicate (Watzlawick et al., 2017) implies both that one cannot not utter (Ongstad, 2019) and that one cannot not use genres (Derrida & Ronell, 1980). These three claims connect the three interrelated communicational levels, sign, utterance, and genre, where a sign is considered as a dependent element in an utterance. The first claim suffices to justify bringing these three levels together hierarchically into a semiotic system that makes up an organism’s lifeworld, which constitutes both a fourth and final level in a communicational system and an ultimate communicational phenomenology (Schütz & Luckmann, 1973) or Umwelt (Uexküll, 1921, 1928). The systemness is associated to a combination of a Hallidayian and a Habermasian perception of communication, and not Luhmann’s (1995) system theory.

An utterance consists of three plus two major aspects (Ongstad, 2019): structured form, content referred to, addressed act, and integrated time and space (Bakhtin, 1986; Ongstad, 2022a, 2023). On the one hand structured forms are any physical structure and division of substance (matter) which has been and can be used by organisms for communication on any semiotic level and in any media, mode, and channel. In a crude physical view, structured form is thus matter. On the other hand it is from a communicational perspective sign (Kress, 2010, p. 132–158), implying that the following four aspects are signs, too. Content is anything that might be referred to by communicating organisms. An act is any pattern of structured form that refers to a content of utterances that are addressed to others. Time and space are physically integrated in the structuring of form in utterances and are hence situated mentally, operated by specific, closely situated organs or mechanisms in the brain, (Moser et al., 2008; Stables, 2012; Tsao et al., 2018; Høydal et al., 2019). These two may both be a part of the structured form and function as the immediate context for an utterance (Rosenthal, 2007). Time and space occur integrated and simultaneously as spacetime (Nomura, 2023) or chronotope (Bakhtin, 1981; Perrino, 2023). As a whole, the five aspects constitute the utterance. Besides, time and space in addition make up the external context for any utterance (Ongstad, 2023).

Utterance is part of any flexible communicational system (framework). Since generative systems are partly closed, partly open, we connect the utterance to three other semiotic levels, hypotaxically ordered from micro to macro: sign, utterance, genre, lifeworld. The five communicational, semiotic aspects, form, content, act, time, and space are arranged parataxically. They work simultaneously, in both the moment of uttering and of receiving. Corresponding processes unfold: semiosis, genrefication, positioning, and, in the case of verbal communication, theme-rheme text-weaving processes, combining given and new information. Processes work within and between levels and within and between aspects as well as between aspects and levels. Signs cooperating (semiosis, CP 5.484) is production/change of meaning. Genrefication is change of kinds of communication (Frow, 2015). Positioning is communicators’ dynamic relation to each sign-aspect of the utterance in order to create wholeness in meaning when uttering or interpreting.

As all aspects of an utterance are signs or sign-elements, signs in utterances function like morphemes in sentences. An utterance is a complex of ‘clustered’ signs. Following Morris (1938), Halliday (1978) and Witzany (2014), the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of signs function through their simultaneity in order to generate a whole that is not just a mechanical addition of parts (Habermas, 1985, 1998; Bakhtin, 1986). The simultaneity of this triad coincides and is integrated with the dyad of chronology and topology. These five aspects constitute uttering as communication (Ongstad, 2023).

Any decontextualised, analytic approach, applying these aspects as operationalized elements, is forced to produce an interpreted whole by investigating, coordinating, and integrating parts. These consist of signs for syntactic organising, semantic meaning, and pragmatic doing, timing, and spacing. Uttering and interpreting are, hence, sign-based, namely a semiosic processing. Linguistics until the 1970s was dominated by the dyadic syntax-semantic paradigm. Bakhtin’s view of the utterance as triadic was based on the idea that pragmatics needed to be a third part. This inclusion enabled a move from dyadic to triadic communication, and hence from language to communication (Bakhtin, 1986). This pragmatic turn prevented linguistics from being utterly theoretical. The same endeavour is needed for semiotics, and was arguably initiated by Sebeok’s (2001, p. 93) claim that all organisms communicate through Umwelten.

Peirce tackled this dilemma by construing the sign in actu. Yet, insisting on conceptualising clusters of signs on all levels of communication brings the risk of foregrounding the very elements of the semiotic system at the dispense of operational concepts for empirical analysis of real (phenomenal) communication in actu. This is the challenge Bakhtin (1986) addressed by replacing Saussurean (grammatical) sentence with utterance, thus positing that addressivity, the pragmatic (“third”) aspect neutralizes the langue-parole split. Hence, echoing Peirce (CP 5.569) we posit: In communication a sign is only a sign in utterances. In search of a communicational phenomenology, we consider signs as dependent building-blocks within utterances. Cognitively, these signs are associated with sense perceptions. All experience is sensed, and sense impressions are stored semiotically.

Key Sign Concepts and Their Relation to Utterance

As common in biosemiotics, we adopt Peirce’s (CP 2.228) concept of sign:

A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object.

It is important to note a terminological confusion: the word ‘sign’ may refer both to the first element of meaning-making, the representation, as well as to the triad formed by the convergence of all three elements (see CP 1.346, 2.242, 5.569, 2.275, 1.542; Short, 2006, p. 54–55). This is a purposeful and important conflation rather than a confusion, though. It has to do with Peirce’s pragmatic view on the relation between representation and interpretation, as expressed by the claim that “nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign” (CP 2.308). Representation and interpretation are mutually implicit with each other and with their shared (represented and interpreted) object. To explain this, Merrell (2001, p. 37) stressed the interdependencies within, defining the sign as:

[…] anything that interdependently interrelates with its interpretant in such a manner that that interpretant interdependently interrelates with its semiotic object in the same way that the semiotic object interdependently interrelates with it, such correlations serving to engender another sign from the interpretant, and subsequently the process is re-iterated.

Another way of saying this, emphasizing that signs are contextual and pragmatic is that a “sign is only a sign in actu” (CP 5.569, 1901). For Peirce, the sign is phenomenal, which implies processual. Hermeneutics and phenomenology are bridged in his view of the sign as something happening. Short (2006, p. 44) explains that for Peirce meaning “must be found in the very process by which one thought interprets another”, which is “why Peirce had to insist that every thought is actually interpreted, as it is the process as a whole that gives its parts significance”. This is how Peirce accounts for context. It is a pragmatic view, also implying that “a sign should leave its interpreter to supply a part of its meaning” (CP 5.448).

An organism’s phenomenal reality is composed of signs that interact on different levels. Umwelten/lifeworlds are semiotically continuous processes. Within these continuous and continuously evolving unities, signs operate differently in and across various regional ontologies (a concept of Husserlian phenomenological description compatible with Peirce’s semiotics, Husserl, 1983, p. 18; see Stjernfelt, 2007). Stables’ (2023) notion of sign as feature of an event helps differentiate between semiotic levels. We propose that utterances are events within the context of genre(s) and signs are their features. Hence, signs corroborate into utterances and, further, genres, which, in turn provide the embodied context that motivate the sign or, so to say, enable the sign to be a sign (in actu). As noted, Peirce’s pragmatism simultaneously accounts for the agencies of context and interpreter: signs (Representamina) usher signs (Interpretants).

To Peircean logic we add a notion of addressing and, hence, virtual receiving implicit in uttering. By prioritizing sign over communication, a crude application of Peircean semiotics risks a systemic misunderstanding. In spite Peirce’s pragmatic notion of the sign, his semiotics is often understood atomistically, in the sense that distinct, dynamic signs singularly belong to individual senders and/or receivers, instead of generated by a community of sign users. This is also despite Peirce’s insistence on the idea that inquiry proper belongs to a community (see also CP 2.654, 5.265):

“[…] the inquirer more or less vaguely identifies himself in sentiment with a Community of which he is a member, and which includes, for example, besides his momentary self, his self of ten years hence; and he speaks of the resultant cognitive compulsions of the course of life of that community as Our Experience.” (CP 8.101).

In a community, we remark, a sign is only a means in a system of kinds of communication, what we call (communicational) genres (Ongstad, 2022a, 2023).

Elleström (2018) offers a strive in the same direction as we do. His model subsumes verbal and nonverbal communication, but does not refer to animal communication. Both models aim to avoid the pitfalls of reductionism, such as present in Shannon and Weaver’s (1964) model, which accounts only for linear communication, or Jakobson’s (1960), which in spite being multifunctional, remains linear. Elleström’s approach to message and mind-body is close to the framework we present, as his model:

“avoids the widespread but notoriously indistinct notion of message that generally conflates communicative entities. As a model of the transfer of cognitive. import from one mind to another through a media product, it allows for a refined. pinpointing of the minds and bodies of the communicators in separate parts of the model […].” (Elleström, 2018, p. 292/our cursives).

Elleström does not theorise utterance and does not position text between sign and kind of communication (no genre-theory). His model stresses the importance of context, but not through a consideration of genre as contextual or of lifeworld/Umwelt. We consider that his proposal can be enriched by considering medium in conjunction with utterance and genre. Elleström (2018, p. 290–291) discussed how sender (utterer) and perceiver (receiver) communicate as minds, but did not problematize systemic communication. Through this comparison we aim to clarify systemicity, a constitutive aspect of our framework. Considering utterance and genre problematizes resources of communication as belonging to a species or a community of sign users, not just to senders and/or perceivers.

Genre vs. Habit

Genre as Level and Genres as Systems

Each utterance is unique because uttering occurs in ever new contexts (Bakhtin, 1986). At the same time, forms of communication sustain organisms’ sets of life-functions: uttering modifies Umwelten. Certain utterances are likely to be repeated, as routines, by schematisation, generating kinds of communication, kinds of utterances, recognisable for members of a species (Tomasello, 2014). These are communicational genres– or life-genres, alluding to their serving life-functions (Ongstad, 2019). Peirce explained this as habituation (see Rosenthal, 1982): the repetition of a sign establishes signs of habit (or law), which he called Legisigns. The repeated ‘Replicas’ of a Legisign are, in turn, governed by the legisign. Peirce illustrated this with an example from language, precisely what literary theory names genre, but without using this term:

“A Legisign is a law that is a Sign. […] It is not a single object, but a general type […]. Every legisign signifies through an instance of its application, which may be termed a Replica of it. Thus, the word “the” will usually occur from fifteen to twenty-five times on a page. It is in all these occurrences one and the same word, the same legisign. Each single instance of it is a Replica. The Replica is a Sinsign. Thus, every Legisign requires Sinsigns. But these are not ordinary Sinsigns, such as are peculiar occurrences that are regarded as significant. Nor would the Replica be significant if it were not for the law which renders it so.” (CP 2.246).

Hence, Peirce’s semiotics offers a way to think about the mutual relation between utterance and genre under the consideration of Replica (or Sinsign) and Legisign. Because his taxonomy of signs is not aimed at language (Short, 2006; Stjernfelt, 2014), it is particularly telling that he selected an example from written language. Peirce had in mind what literary theory calls utterance and genre: ways of talking/writing are characterized by habits of repeating words. This lays the pathway for considering life-genre, in a biosemiotic view. As a certain kind of utterance, life-genre accordingly consists of the same aspects as utterance– form, content, act, time, and space. Genre aspects, working in ‘real-life’ communication, beget different weights, depending on kind of communication, for instance emotional, cognitive, or imperative. To understand, receivers must interpret an intended dominant (Jakobson, 1935/[1971]), or Legisign. Particular genres thus help balance the appropriate dynamics of structure, reference, and action in time and space when uttering and interpreting. They are habitual (repetitive). While single utterances belong to utterers and receivers, specific genres are shared by a community. As such, species can share parts of genre systems not only within, but also with other species. This is in line with Stables’ (2012, p. 120) view that “phenomenal worlds interact and overlap but never quite coincide”. Models of communication that segregate uttering and emitting are reductionist. They miss the key element in communication as a phenomenon, the systemic collective (dialogic) aspect (Ongstad, 2022a; see Petrilli & Ponzio, 2005, p. 48).

Logically, the word kind does not imply handling kind as an objective, clearly limited and closed category. Rather, ‘kind of’ means ‘similar, not the same’, implying comparison. There is a close etymological relation between kind, genre, and kin, a Wittgensteinean “family resemblance”. The openness that communicating by genres implies is efficient, since it enables often immediate understanding, but also risky, since it fluctuates between open and closed, which requires contextual adaptation (Ongstad, 2022b, 2023; Martin, 1997). Each genre is not necessarily exactly the same for all, though. There are different roles, and possible discrepancies presuppose interpretation (Ongstad, 2021, 2022a). In addition, receivers must be able to convert received percepts into specific concepts and signs for future uttering. Genres are acquired by socializing and learning from early on (Tozuka et al., 2009). Some birdsongs even get tuition (Naguib & Riebel, 2014) and seem to have a stability similar to that of human languages (Lachlan et al., 2018). As such, we look at birdsongs to exemplify how utterance and genre can be employed in biosemiotic empirical research (in Sect. 5).

All genres are part of an ever growing system of genres since new genres stem from established ones, which function as scaffoldings. A species has access to an interrelated system of life-genres, directly connected to its basic life-functions. Taking care of the functionality of each genre, as well as the whole set, is necessary for the survival of the individual as well as the species. Discriminating between genres and registering possible shifts are crucial. The storing of communicational resources as signs, utterances, and genre systems is organized through and by the lifeworld, as an advanced mental orchestrating system for meaning production and sensemaking (Habermas, 1985; see Sect. 5, below).

Two Historical Perceptions of Habit– stability Versus Change

Barandiaran and Di Paolo (2014) identify two major historical traditions of thinking of habit: associationist, which conceives habits atomistically, and organicist, which sees habits as dynamically configured stable patterns, strengthened and individualized by their enactment. Their survey of ‘habit’ indicates an organicist pathway from Spinoza, via Kant and Goethe, to Uexküll and an associationist line from Descartes, via Locke and Reid, to Peirce. Notably, Uexküll is placed in the organicist line. Although Peirce’s forerunners are seen as associationists, it is clearly marked that, together with James and Dewey, he belongs to (‘American’) pragmatism, which breaks away from the behaviourism of associationism.

Despite its rich and diverse history in philosophy (Barandiaran & Di Paolo, 2014), the term habit may suggest an association with fixedness. It faces similar assumptions and accusations as Bourdieu’s habitus, an embodied system of habits based on contextual and physical conditions generating a body’s secondary, socialised ‘nature’, which functions as a lasting disposition (Bourdieu, 1977).

The classical behaviourist view does not allow for semiosis (Kull, 2022). Without communicational intention, behavior is an automatic repetition. Behaviouristic habit-formation theory cannot account for novelty and growth. Where habitual processes are automatic, there is no semiosis. Semiosis, as a growth process, involves habituation (Kull, 2022) and has two parallel aspects, habit-taking (repeating) and semiotic fitting (adapting). Kull argues that one should discriminate between non-communicational acts or behaviors (ethology) and communication (semiotics). Thus, to move one’s feet for the sake of transportation alone is different from, say, moving feet during a display to attract a potential sexual partner. If the display is not good enough, the initiator may increase efforts to improve dance at the next opportunity. Semiosis adds to habit. Danesi (2018, p. 449) points out that, for Peirce, old habits are modified and new ones come into being because of semiosis.

Similarly, Nöth (2016) argues that Peirce’s evolutionary perspective on symbols and habits is incompatible with approaches characterized by codedness and arbitrariness, such as, for instance, Ernst Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. According to Nöth (2016, p. 35), Peirce’s “law of habit” is an extension of the ordinary and scholarly concept of habit, from human to nonhuman and from animate to inanimate matter:

It predicts that habits change by the habit of habit change and [Peirce] distinguished between habits, laws, rules, and norms. […] Peirce attributes the plasticity of habits also to the laws of cosmic and biological evolution and distinguishes laws as habits of nature from rigid laws that do not change.

Habit is thus evolutionary. West (2016, p. 421) argues that Peirce’s entire semiotics rests upon habit: “It unifies individual existents and integrates them with the fullness of the continuum. Peirce expresses this process as “concretion” or all in the one (1.478, 5.107, 8.208)”. Anderson (2016, p. 11) finds his perspective so vast that to humans habit is like water to fish.

Habit Versus Genre

The Peircean notion of habit, historically and epistemologically, is the concept within biosemiotics closest to genre. However, in Volume 2 of The Essential Peirce, which covers the last 20 years of most of his production, none of the selected writings has habits as explicit topic. Although the term is indexed, in this selection habit is in the shadow. As a contrast, less than twenty years later the number of texts on Peirce’s habit-concept has multiplied, claiming that habit is at the heart of Peirce’s philosophy.

Peirce’s extremely broad and rich perception of habit and the many new interpretations, extensions, and deepening of his notion in Anderson and West (2016) leads West (2016) in the to problematize the complexions of habit in this book’s epilogue. Her opinion is shared by della Rosa (2022). Further, Nöth (2010) points to the tight connection between sign and habit, arguing that Peirce’s theory of the symbol is much broader than concepts traditionally used by semioticians often defining symbols by using the criteria of conventionality, arbitrariness, and codedness. He finds that Peirce proposes a much broader concept when he defines the symbol as a sign having “the virtue of a growing habit” (Nöth, 2010, p. 82).

According to West (2013, p. 118) Peircean habit has five major characteristics: “a tendency or disposition, regularity or continuity, physical/cognitive readiness, coordinating mind and matter, and habituescence.” She finds that these implicitly integrate epistemology and ontology, matter and mind, inner and outer world:

There are three categories of being; ideas of feelings, acts of reaction, and habits. Habits are either habits about ideas of feelings or habits about acts of reaction.…The former is the Inner World, the world of Plato’s forms. The other is the Outer World, or universe of existence. (c.1897: CP 4.157) (West, 2013, p. 118).

Our scope is restricted to asking which are the major similarities and differences between a habit and genre. Regarding similarities, habit and genre share some significant basic characteristics. Genre shares with habit, to a certain degree, all of West’s five traits. First, a genre is a disposition (similar to Bourdieu’s habitus). Next, genre creates continuity, which may be broken though giving a significant contextual change. In addition, genre consciousness implies, not only cognitive, but even social and emotional readiness, known as horizon of expectation (Jauss, 2001). Also, just as habit, genre coordinates mind and matter (but includes society).

Fifthly, genre theory understands itself at a meta-level as genricity (over time) or habituescence, “the taking of habits”, (Cannizzaro & Anderson, 2016, p. 315). Sixthly, and last, Nöth (2016, p. 61) makes a significant point regarding Peirce’s view on habit: “Since symbols grow and never remain the same, the habits by which they are interpreted need to change while the symbols grow.” This intimate dialogical inter-dependency would hold for genre as well– the newness (semiosis) of the utterance in new contexts will over time force genre to adapt, exemplifying the process of genricity (Frow, 2015).

Regarding differences, habit firstly is a far broader and more general notion than the framework’s genre concept. Peirce extends habit even to processes in non-organic nature, whilst the applied genre concept only concerns communication between minds in contexts:

All things have a tendency to take habits. For atoms and their parts, molecules and groups of molecules, and in short every conceivable real object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former like occasion than otherwise. (“A Guess at the Riddle”, CP 1.409 and EP1: 277; 1887–1888). (Nöth, 2016, p. 47).

Secondly, genre is inextricably linked to the Bakhtinian idea of uttering, just as tight as habit is linked to sign. Thirdly, the genre framework shares with Morris (1938) the view that communication, and thus genre, should be perceived as an integrated dynamics of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (in context). Fourthly, for Peirce habits only operate in two worlds, the inner and the outer, while genre is anchored in three, an inner, outer, and social world, or self, world, and society, to use Habermas’ concepts for the life-world (Habermas, 1985). This means that while any single member of a species in principle can utter, genre belongs as said to the species as a community. In this sense it is a concept of a different nature than habit. Although Peirce is a significant pragmatist and indeed relates to a social dimension, he did not develop a theoretical model of society. Systems of genres are societies (Luckmann, 2009). When genres die, society dies as well. This is why genre is a socio-semiotic concept.

Fifthly, Peirce relates habits to feeling and actions (c.1897: CP 4.157). He states that […] action cannot exist without the immediate being of feeling on which to act” (5.436: 1904). The framework’s genre concept forces feelings and actions to merge with cognition. It is interesting to note that as early as 1903, Andrew defined habit as: “[…] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience” (Andrew, 1903, Danesi, 2018, p. 448). While this definition of habit is fixed, it nevertheless accommodates a hidden triadic perception.

Umwelt Versus Lifeworld in a Phenomenological Perspective

From Genre to Lifeworld

Any study of communicational macro phenomena, such as habitus, discourse, habit, and genre must rely on two outermost, phenomenological borders: a communicational minimum and maximum. Semiotically the smallest unit for analyses is the sign. Several notions have been proposed for an ultimate general frame, an overarching phenomenology, such as Husserl’s Lebenswelt, Uexküll’s Umwelt, and Lotman’s semiosphere. Husserl’s broad concept Lebenswelt, was further developed in German sociology and philosophy by scholars such as Schütz, Luckmann, and Habermas (Knoblauch, 2013). Later, Luckmann (2009) even made room for genre.

Lifeworld can be seen as an ultimate mental background and environment for meaning making. According to Habermas (1984, p. 100), a lifeworld consists of a dynamic compound of three interwoven and simultaneous components: an inner world (self), a mental representation of an outer world (the world as referential, mental ‘objects’), and relations to others (society). There are thus a subjective world, which are all experiences to which each communicator has privileged access, an objective world, about which there can be made true statements, and a social world consisting of all interpersonal relations. To the components there are three corresponding reproduction processes: socialization, cultural reproduction, social integration (Habermas, 1984, p. xxvii, p. 100). Although Habermas (1998) stressed the stability and the reproduction of these tripartite lifeworld aspects, they should also be seen as in flux, renewed through semiotic processes.

We see these interconnected lifeworld-aspects as the maximum meaning context for cultural communication. Their overall triadic nature is indivisible, living beings must communicate: there will always be a dynamic interconnection between self, world, and others in any utterance and genre, be it humans’ speech acts or animals’ calls (Ongstad, 2019).

Meta-studying Habermas’ compact theoretical phenomenology we can trace some constituting principles: Utterances are driving forces for joint formation of identities, cultures, and societies. Further, the Habermasian definition of communication as a phenomenon is triadic. Next, to understand self, world, and society phenomenologically synchronic and diachronic views must be fused. In addition, there are ’vertical’ and horizontal systemic correspondences between all key components (Ongstad, 2019). Finally, the paradox of simultaneity of key components obstructs traditional validation, which requires balancing subjectivity, objectivity, and intersubjectivity. This implies combining empirical and hermeneutic approaches.

However, Habermas opened no room for a communicational meso-level, such as genre. As seen, Bakhtin and Halliday did. Reasoning from a dialogical perspective how utterance-genre dynamics contributes to the three components of lifeworld, and as a whole, lifeworlds will firstly have to be composed, irrespectively of whether one particular aspect would be given subjective primacy, such as for instance deep religious beliefs, scientific based attitudes, or socialness. Besides, it will have to be, not only sign-based, but, with Habermas, even communicational. It would further have to be partly flexible, given that signs, utterances, genres, and contexts are under constant semiosis, and so are their carriers. All worldviews are therefore in the making. Last, although certain lifeworld patterns might be shared across species and even taxa, a lifeworld is always individual and subjective.

Summarized: A lifeworld is an individual, sign-, utterance-, and genre-based, and thus communicatively generated, flexible, phenomenological perception of self, world, and society in which subordinated level phenomena are integrated. For analysis, this equally wide and detailed outlook offers various entrances to study animal and educational communication. This openness implies that the choice of type of research object, or phenomenon, is just as crucial for a project as the applied theory.

In principle the lifeworld, consisting of three integrated mind-sets, as a whole, is inscrutable for direct research. Inquiries have to rely on registrable patterns, symptomatically interpreted. This means that the phenomenology of creatures’ lifeworld can only be assumed, not fully proved, in spite the fact that one of the components, “objective” world, might be empirically analyzed.

Umwelt Versus Lifeworld

Tønnessen et al. (2018, p. 325) observe that Husserl’s phenomenology and von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory were developed around the same time. Both have Kantian roots. Husserl moved towards a transcendental approach, Uexküll towards animal subjectivity, referring to Kant’s “phenomenal worlds” (‘Erscheinungswelten’). Umwelt theory is a biological theory that bestows phenomenal worlds to all animals and differentiates these from species to species and from one individual to another (Tønnessen et al., 2018).

While more than a hundred years of intellectual work in various sciences has been spent on giving this concept a functional delimitation, many all-encompassing notions may rest in the term’s wide original meaning. Etymologically the Um- in Umwelt may hint to a world around an experiencing human being. In an Uexküllean view, Umwelt is any agent’s perceived world: “[…] the subjective world of an organism, enveloping a perceptual world and an effector world, which is always part of the organism itself and a key component of nature.” (Tønnessen et al., 2016, p. 129; see also Tønnessen, 2015). In this extrapolation of Umwelt we see a parallel to our phenomenological uptake of utterance and genre.

Tønnessen et al. (2018) explain how biosemiotics relates to the phenomenology implicit in Uexküll’s notions through four questions:

  1. i

    Are there phenomena beyond human experience?

  2. ii

    What is the relation between semiosis and phenomena?

  3. iii

    Should Biosemiotic Phenomenology be practiced as pure theory, or as applicable for empirical studies? And lastly,

  4. iv

    how can biosemiotics contribute to phenomenology?” (Tønnessen et al., 2018, p. 323/our split into separate lines).

Concerning question (i), we subscribe to the general biosemiotic agreement that all animals live in a phenomenological world. Given our ambition to circumscribe (human) learning to (animal) communication, we seek notions that phenomenologically accompany an evolutionary perspective. Even if, for instance, the Umwelt of Uexküll’s (1992) tics is less complex than ours, both species are likely to share some basic aspects. Hence, we presuppose an evolutionary continuum of phenomenologies: phenomenal worlds overlap (Stables, 2012).

That an organism’s Umwelt changes continuously motivates question two (ii). Semiosis is phenomenal. How signs change the Umwelt has been discussed mostly through Peircean optics. An additional, socio-semiotic description is outlined under point 5.

Regarding question (iii), an aim for us is applicability, also suggested by Tønnessen et al. (2018). Yet, there seemingly is a slight hesitation in their answer, which may be related to a partly structural-systemic pattern of Peircean semiotics (Lacková, 2023). Others have also remarked problems in operationalizing Peirce’s interpretant into practical pragmatics analyses (Habermas, 1998; Cobley & Randviir, 2009).

Our resolve to the last question (iv) is highlighting communicational phenomenology, by marking the line from sign, via utterance and life-genre, to Umwelt, or with our concept, lifeworld. This opens pathways to inquire on the perception of genres and their hypothesised functions as part of lifeworld (or Umwelt) phenomenologies. In line with philosophy of embodiment, semiotics in general and biosemiotics in particular we argue that signification and perception are intertwined (Stjernfelt, 2014; Hoffmeyer & Stjernfelt, 2016; Paolucci, 2021; Olteanu, 2021).

The two key notions behind Umwelt theories and lifeworld are sign and communication, respectively (Sharov & Tønnessen, 2021; Knoblauch, 2013). Theorizing based on sign is bottom-up and based on communication is top-down. This difference does not necessarily obstruct compatibilities, despite some epistemological divergencies: Sign, in the Peircean-Sebeokean sense does not imply an exchange between two distinct agents, while communication implies acting agents and observable utterances. Sign emphasises specificity and communication, generality.

To formalize, a choice must be taken between habit and genre. We have advocated for genre, or life-genre when related to animal communication. An advantage of the morpheme life- compared to Um- for capturing the phenomenological essence of a subject’s ‘world’ is that lifeworld includes and integrates under one concept what Uexküll may have divided into Innenwelt and Umwelt. Two other patterns are particularly significant.

Firstly, one of the keys to integrating a subject, an ‘objective’ world, and an other, hence an assumed unity of self/person, world, and society is the Habermasian definition of the lifeworld as triadic communication (Habermas, 1985). This kind of triadic thinking is pragmatic (Cobley & Randviir, 2009). Except for Morris, this view differed from the American thinking of Peirce, Mead, and Dewey, which is based on sign, system and/or culture and not on triadic theories of utterance, text, or genre (Bakhtin, 1986; Halliday, 1994; Luckmann, 2009; on semiotic approaches to selfhood see Wiley, 1994).

Secondly, the interrelatedness of the claims that one cannot not utter and not communicate marks how far this thinking moved toward the broadest possible perception of communication. This view equips us with a refined key to study specific phenomenologies. Nevertheless, the two construals are still in line with Sebeok’s and Hoffmeyer’s claim that life and sign presuppose each other. This non-random coincidence opens the doors for connecting systemically sign, utterance, genre, and lifeworld. Together with scaffolding and affordance, they can constitute a theoretical system.

Exemplifying: Uttering into Emergence

From System to Application?

To prioritise between theory and empirical practice is a general challenge when applying symbol-sciences such as mathematics, linguistics, and semiotics. Schütze (2016) relates grammaticality to inquiries of whether a certain structure is grammatical. This epistemological positioning prioritises linguistics over applied linguistics. Analogically, semioticity would thus risk working as an epistemology that primarily expropriates empirical data to enhance semiotic theory. What Saussure, Chomsky and Halliday share is the prioritisation of grammaticality and semioticity as systemic, theoretical norms. In their theories there is, just as in mathematics, no utterer in the flesh within the system. Their abstract systems are supposed to be applied. This kind of meta-positioning is a major challenge for semiotics in general, including Peircean semiotics (Habermas, 1998).

Accordingly, our ambition to apply such a semiotics in animal and educational communication is challenged. It triggers a call for an added social semiotics, not one that prioritises function over the utterer and the material world though as Hallidayian and Habermasian traditions tend to do, but rather as Bühler (1934), Jakobson, Bakhtin, Posner, and Morris advocated equal integration of key aspects, as also indicated by Petrilli and Ponzio (2005, p. 22–24; see also Petrilli (2016).

Concepts Applied in Educational and Cultural Fields

Until now the paper considered zoo-communication in general. Here we zoom in to the domains of intra-individual communication and, as such, learning. Communicating to teach and learn is not restricted to human lifeworlds. Birds, for instance, offer many undeniable examples through their songs. Singing, we specify, is (a form of) uttering.

The changes implied by the environmental crisis have various species change behavior. For example, various bird species are observed to change song accordingly (Buxton et al., 2016; Oliver et al., 2018). Our proposal offers biosemiotics a way to tap into such research by observing the reshaping of phenomenal worlds in the interrogation of utterance and genre. Namely, the (re-)modelling of Umwelten is observed as the production of new genres associated with new singing behaviors, understood as uttering. As biosemiotics is traditionally akin to bioacoustics (Sueur & Farina, 2015; Farina et al., 2021), this is one area where meso-level phenomenological concepts can be employed.

Of course, the grasp of biosemiotic analysis should not be confined to the classic scope of (non-semiotic) animal studies. Indeed, the biosemiotic study of soundscapes has already tackled change in Umwelten caused by (human) technologies aimed at communicating with birds (on birdscaring see Smith, 2022). Our approach to communication equips biosemiotics with a hermeneutically finer toolbox for analyzing cultural and technological emergence. In the current technological revolution, as philosophy of mind is equated with philosophy of technology (Clowes et al., 2021), it is important for biosemiotics to find ways to address technology. Biosemiotics can well tap into this discussion, given its emphasis on the continuity of evolution and explanation of emergence as a difference of degree, not kind, through the notion of scaffolding (Hoffmeyer, 2015a; see also Kull, 2009; Jablonka & Ginsburg, 2022; Campbell, 2022; Olteanu, 2022).

Biosemiotics explains sociocultural emergence as “the invention of social semiotic scaffolding mechanisms such as dance and art, written language, city life, military organizations, cathedrals, the printing press, fast moving transportation systems, radio, telephone, movies, TV, personal computers and mobile phones, the internet etc.” (Hoffmeyer, 2015b, p. 251). We remark in Hoffmeyer’s reckoning of social semotic scaffolding, the necessity for a proper social semiotic conceptualization. In a different wording but compatible conceptualization, also stressing continuity, Marais (2019) biosemiotically construes socio-cultural emergence as translation. This is, of course, a broad notion of translation as multimodal and intermedial, not confined to one mode or modality (e.g., language).

The social semiotic concept of genre as “canonical conceptions of choices of mode” (Kress, 2010, p. 20) is compatible with our concept of genre as realized through and reshaping affordances. Modes (resources) that can be co-opted into semiosis stem from affordances.

Hoffmeyer (2015b, p. 251–252) explains that a “jump to higher level semiotic scaffolding systems tends to homogenize cultural performances at the lower level while opening up new agendas of expressivity at the higher level.” Our proposal is to observe emergence as a type of genrification. Because emergence supposes changes of genre, it will display the homogenization of an old genre and the practice of new types of utterances in new genres which, at first, are highly heterogenous. Hoffmeyer explained that “compared with the diversity of ways handwritten manuscripts had been designed earlier, manuscripts published as books after the advent of the printing press became much more standardized. Especially geographic atlases now had to conform to canonical regulations or general consensus since, for instance, people became confused when Paradise was positioned at different locations on different atlases.” (Hoffmeyer, 2015b, p. 251–252.)

Here, new ways of uttering, through print, established new kinds of communication (genres). This environmental change implied the canonization of atlases into a homogenous genre, without space for innovative uttering. At the same time, by providing new possibilities for uttering, print led to new genres, such as the novel.

From a social semiotic perspective, van Leeuwen was observing the same matter when he claimed that the introduction of digital media technologies in human societies is changing writing and, as such, language. The diversification of the plethora of available semiotic resources that can be employed as morphemes results in a change of language (see Ledin &Machin, 2019). van Leeuwen (2008, p. 132) observed “[…] a new writing which integrates writing and image in new ways and increasingly blurs the distinction between the two”. Through media such as PowerPoint and Illustrator, new types of uttering emerge that hybridize what used to be the “page” of print or Ms Word with what used to be the TV “screen”. Consequently, new genres are formed that reshape human lifeworlds. For example, the media technologies that van Leeuwen had in mind changed what an academic presentation and lecture may look like and ushered the TED Talk platform, a genre that, however distinctive, uses previously established genres as scaffoldings.

If the social semiotic consideration of technological emergence would revolve around language, biosemiotics should do well to regard it with skepticism. This is not the case, though. For example, underlining that van Leeuwen’s analysis takes space as a semiotic resource, Ledin and Machin (2019) extend it to unravel the neoliberal ideology of IKEA kitchens. In a biosemiotic view, Ledin and Machin are analysing the (domestic) Umwelten of contemporary humans. They observe how a furniture company adopts existing genres, which it re-enforces through a homogenization of uttering. Utterances, in this case, come in the form of furniture. In both Hoffmeyer’s and van Leeuwen’s discussions we see genrification as a necessary strategy to adapt to, which implies modelling, new environments. This illustrates how our proposal follows the (bio)semiotic effort to collapse the dichotomy between (educational) learning and (‘biological’) adaptation (Kull, 2014, 2023; Stables, 2016; Olteanu & Stables, 2018; Campbell, 2022). Genrification is an adaptive strategy: organisms acquire new patterns of uttering according to changes of affordances.

Conclusions

Our study of sign and communicational concepts bridges theoretical gaps that biosemiotics still carries from the enduring dichotomy of cultural and cognitive approaches to meaning (see Olteanu, 2021). We propose a consistently hierarchical, hypotactic structure of a system of sign, utterance, life-genre/habits, and Umwelt/lifeworld. By stressing communication as inevitable, phenomenology is made integrable in bio-semiotic sign-thinking. This perspective’s phenomenological advantage is to make likely the possibility of an accumulative system for organisms’ experiences from the minute micro-level sign up to the most comprehensive macro-level, Umwelt/lifeworld.

In a semiotic perspective, phenomenology studies the world according to a mind. The outer world is enacted by the mind through percepts (Paolucci, 2021, p. 128–131). In sociology, the Thomas-theorem marks an acceptance of this subjective aspect of life, by the inference that if humans define situations as real, they are real in their consequences (in agreement with Peirce, see CP 1.432, 1.435, 2.433). In linguistics the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis suggests that languages create worldviews. Husserl’s lifeworld, Uexküll’s Umwelt, and Peirce’s sign generate phenomenologies. For empirical studies this implies the necessity to balance subjectivity, objectivity, and intersubjectivity (Habermas, 1984).

Our review brings to surface an empirically researchable entity, the utterance, connecting simultaneously, and hence parataxically, manifest (in matter) formed structure, with the immanent semiotic sign-aspects content, act, time, and space. Of utmost importance is the clustering of habit, scaffolding, and event to the systemic concept life-genre, creating a crucial resource for meaning making. This concept-combination may not only better open up organisms’ physical and mental life to inquiry, but offers an empirical anchoring in organisms’ and species’ life-functions, for a predominantly theoretically oriented biosemiotics.

In agreement with recent cognitive-phenomenological approaches that converge toward reconciling representation and enactment (Clark, 2016; Gallagher, 2017; Paolucci, 2021), our proposal assumes that concepts rely on sensed percepts. This paper explains how biosemiotics can contribute to this scholarship by adopting the notions of utterance and genre, which implies extrapolating them from literary to phenomenological description. The crucial point is that embodied signs and genres enable uttering. Even if biosemiotics must investigate parts, such as utterers, utterances, and interpreting receivers as separate significant phenomena, meaning as a whole is established as a hermeneutic circle in which they loop (Nöth, 1998; Petrilli & Ponzio, 2006, p. 37–38: Stables, 2012) through the systemic collectivity of life-genres. This view establishes systemness through an overarching epistemology, which is a dialectic relationship between parts and whole, as also proposed in Cobley and Stjernfelt’s (2015) exploration of scaffolding. Hence, such a holistic view has no value without a recognition of and broad insight into signs, theoretically and empirically, the elements that (re)construct communicational semiotics.

Our framework allows for empirical studies on animal and human communication through the clarification of the concept utterance. It explains genrification through a hermeneutic interrogation of meaning. The consideration of genrification brings a meso-level analytical concept enabling a phenomenological description of subjective worlds that is neither top-down, nor bottom-up. The bidirectional relation of micro- (signs) and macro-level (Umwelten, lifeworlds) phenomena is regulated by meso-level phenomena. We identify meso-level phenomena as utterances and genres, which follow, in their turn and in this order the phenomenological hierarchy. The relation between utterances and genres can be understood, in Peircean terms, as a Replica-Legisign relation. The structured form of this analytical framework can be studied and documented physically: utterances are accounted for by their consequences. Their consequences are changes in genres and, as such, in Umwelten and lifeworlds. It can further be investigated through the study of its aspects as signs. Finally, the specificity of (five) aspects and (four) levels opens possibilities for fine-grained analyses of different phenomenologies of semiotic communication.

Comparing and approaching the conceptual sets sign-habit-Umwelt with utterance-genre-lifeworld implies challenging some principles behind two somewhat different epistemologies, bio- and socio-semiotics. Whilst biosemiotics is heavily anchored in the sign and its semiosis, considering Umwelt as sign-generated, socio-semiotics gives priority to society and communication. Biosemiotics is a significant, comprehensive, and dynamic field. The more utterance-and-genre based socio-semiotics is well established as a form of cultural criticism, but overlooked in the purpose of zoo-communication.

Particularly in the consideration of phenomenology, two different principles of bio- and socio-semiotics are of importance: the level of explanation and the direction of interpretation. Biosemiotics works from the sign and bottom-up while socio-semiotics searches meaning and works top-down. On the one hand, Umwelt is considered a sign-phenomenon characterised by routinized habits. On the other hand, lifeworld as a phenomenology is seen as communicational, and generated by, in principle flexible, but relatively stable life-genres. These divergences can be navigated into an integrated approach. This can be managed through three steps:

  1. 1.

    considering the sign as a dependent aspect in utterances;

  2. 2.

    construing society as a co-constitutive aspect in the concept Umwelt; and.

  3. 3.

    seeing communicational habits as kinds of utterances, life-genres.

Finally, while studies of animal phenomenologies can be carried through well-developed semiotic theories, they cannot and should not overlook a basic understanding of (physical) matter. Our definition of utterance offers such a link. Peircean semiotics, although potentially applicable, is primarily a sign-grammar. It may face challenges similar to Saussurean linguistics without pragmatics. Peirce-inspired pragmatics should increase its efforts to show how semiotics is connected to life. A socio-semiotic understanding of pragmatics can corroborate with biosemiotics to establish this link.

In this paper, the intention is not a full integration, but rather to show that studies of semiotic phenomena can gain sophistication, a holistic grasp, and more detailed analysis by operating on four levels and conceiving communication as dynamics of five constituting aspects.