When a Traffic Light Became a Sayer: II. When a Meaning Became a Command

In the first post, we saw that STOP is the content realised by red.

But STOP is not only something that can be represented.

It is something that someone is being asked to do.

This is the interpersonal side of the traffic light.

When the light turns red, the traffic light is not merely presenting the meaning STOP to the driver. It is making a command.

The traffic light is therefore functioning as Speaker, and the driver as Addressee.

This does not mean that the traffic light has become a person. Speaker and Addressee are roles in an exchange. The traffic light can occupy the first role without possessing a human voice, consciousness or language.

The important thing is what its signal is doing.

Red realises STOP.

STOP functions as a command.

The two descriptions are not competing accounts. They are different metafunctional construals of the same semiotic event.

Ideationally, STOP is a material process.

Interpersonally, STOP is a command.

And the two meanings are not added together after the fact. They belong to the same content.

This helps explain something that otherwise seems rather odd about traffic lights.

We can say:

Red means stop.

But in an actual traffic situation, we naturally understand something stronger:

Stop.

The first describes the relation between expression and content within the semiotic system.

The second construes what that content is doing in an exchange.

A traffic light therefore does not merely have a meaning. Its meaning is organised so that it can function as a move directed towards another participant.

And this brings us back to the word saying.

If the traffic light is a Speaker, then perhaps it can also be understood as a Sayer.

But that seems to create a problem.

A Sayer is involved in a verbal process. And verbal processes normally involve language.

What, then, does the traffic light actually say?

Not Stop! — because those words belong to language, and there are no words inside the red light.

So perhaps the traffic light is saying something without saying it in words.

The next step is to find out what that could mean.