Dear Semiotics
By Oscar Miyamoto
Tartu, October 2nd, 2024
You are my type,
I am your token.
If you were a bodily syndrome,
I’d be your number one symptom.
“Semiosis ad infinitum” you say?
Is it some kind of Tourette?
Please keep talking nerdy to me.
You’re such a wordy vedette.
You are my symbol,
I am your replica.
If you were less cryptic and nimble,
You’d be almost evangelical.
You’ve got a soft-spoken voice.
But you are no heavenly creed,
Few can suffer your jargon.
Have you been smoking weed?
“Representamen and discourse” you whine?
I could not find any fitting rhymes.
“Qualisign, sinsign, legisign”?
My brain is going off-line.
You are my elusive noumenon,
I am your raw phenomenon.
If you were a high-impact journal,
I would thoroughly submit to you.
I wish I was your doctoral thesis,
so you would do me all over your desk.
I wish I was a palimpsest
so you could do me all over again.
Didn’t you receive the memo?
You shed light on everything but yourself.
Not even Foucault and Eco
could finish browsing your bookshelf.
“Have you heard about the linguistic turn?”
I once asked a cute librarian.
She excused herself: “I have to adjourn”.
I felt like a creepy sectarian.
Our tango is so synchronic
but our love is only Platonic.
Continental-analytical?
A kink almost diabolical.
Please, do not get jealous.
I’ve been flirting with Biology.
She’s much more sexual and sedulous.
At least I am not dating Semiology!
Postscript:
My dear Semiotics,
Marketing only wants you for your elegance.
And don’t fall for artificial intelligence.
You were doing great with natural stupidity.
Just make sure your arguments have some validity.
Photo credit: Modified version of “The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Charles Sanders Peirce.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/79d9c2d8-f39f-4228-e040-e00a18061fdc “