Chapter 3: Antithesis in culture and sign-creation
Chapter 3: Antithesis in culture and sign-creation

Summary/Abstract: 3.1. Determining the viewpoint In its most general form, antithesis (if we proceed from Webster) means opposition, contrast, or also the rhetorical contrast of ideas by means of parallel arrangements of words or statements; in dialectics antithesis marks the second stage of a dialectic process. Observing the occurrence of antithesis in culture it becomes apparent that setting opposites, contrasts and oppositions appear in all spheres of the self-description of a person (and culture). Based on results of biosemiotic research it is even indicated that the identification of self in relation to other is the most ancient and also the first (semiotic) opposition in living organisms in general (Sebeok 1989; Bickerton 1990). Based on languagehistory data, Boris Porshnev claims this same oppositionality, but postulates the opposite primacy of grammatical persons: the they- (he)/concept existed before the we-(I)/concept, which means that one initially identified oneself according to the other (Porshnev 1979 [1966]: 81).

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