One of President Clinton’s most famous quotations can serve as the epigraph for this post: “That depends on what the meaning of is is.” He was ridiculed for it at the time, but it was in fact a recognition of the desirability and often enough the necessity of precision in linguistic communication, too often incomplete, unclear, or ambiguous. So let me move on to the two SAs (Saint Augustine and Samuel Alito) and the upside down flag. Considering such topics inevitably raises the status of human language as a system of signs and the larger question of non-verbal sign systems generally. It should be obvious that the study of language must involve the study of sign theory. One of the Greek words for “sign,” sema, is the root of the technical English linguistic term, semantics. A famous Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure used the term semiology to refer to both verbal and extra-verbal sign systems. It is interchangeable with another fancy word, semiotics. It means: the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.
Around the year 400 Saint Augustine wrote one of the most brilliant books about language and signification the world has yet seen. Its title (De doctrina christiana) is usually translated as On Christian Doctrine, but this is misleading. Latin doctrina does not mean “doctrine” as that word is now mainly used. It means “teaching” in the active sense of pedagogy: how we go about teaching and learning. Augustine intended it as a preface to biblical study. All teaching, he says, is about one of two matters: either res (things) or signa (signs). “But things are indicated by signs.”* Augustine was trying to defend the adequacy of human language to communicate truth. Ancient Sophists, like their modern progeny, the so-called deconstructionists, liked to argue that precise communication was impossible because it depended upon the use of words, which are by nature fatally ambiguous. “Words are explained only by other words”. In terms of achieving clarity, that is like “bringing an unlighted candle into a dark room.”
Augustine makes a distinction between two kinds of signs. Some signs are natural, meaning deriving from the world of nature. Think for a moment about fire. Smoke, heat and visible combustion are all signs of fire. They are natural signs of the thing, fire. They are easily interpretable by every human being on earth. But what about the word “fire” itself? It is a sign of a different kind. It is a conventional sign—meaning one that has been established by the agreement of a certain group of people, namely English-speakers. Speakers of other languages will use other signs: (ignis, pyr, feu, fuego, Feuer, etc.). If someone offers you a gift, you are more likely to be pleased if you are in Birmingham than if you are in Berlin, as Gift is the German word for poison.
Of course, there are many non-verbal signs that play important roles in all our lives: traffic lights, for example, and many road signs, among a myriad of others. The other SA of this essay, Samuel Alito, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, is currently involved in a controversy with broad semiological implications with a non-verbal sign: our nation’s flag.
The flag, it turns out can do much more than indicate national identity or patriotism. And the marked “indeterminacy” of the idea of “patriotism” is suggested by the fact that the January 6th invaders of the Capitol sincerely claimed it as their motive. The only demonstrator actually shot dead by the police, Ashli Babbitt, bore no conventional weapon but was said to be using a poled American flag in an aggressive fashion. Clear video evidence records others using flag poles as clubs. Now it is not suggested that Justice Alito committed any violence; but his private residence does have a flagpole, and there are photographs clearly showing the American flag flying upside down (i.e. with the blue quadrant with the fifty stars at the lower right rather than the upper left.) Now, it is not easy to produce a simple meaning for the American or any other national flag. It is a national symbol, but different people will have a variety of different associations with it. But by semi-convention an inverted flag is “a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property." This is the language of the semi-official “American Flag Code.” But we already now have two semis—meaning (for me) that there is no definitive meaning to the display of an inverted flag, an ambiguous act subject to much subjective interpretation. Alito’s critics claim that since the inverted flag was carried by some of the Capitol rioters on January 6, 2021—a claim that seems plausible, though one I have not been able to confirm from easily available iconographic evidence—the flag so displayed is an approbation of unlawful insurrection. So Justice Alito must be a—a what? According to his own testimony this whole thing had nothing to do with him—it was his wife!—not that he acknowledges any impropriety or assigns any definite meaning in her flag display. The meanings being imputed to him are murky, but in every case unflattering. Even if he is not an insurrectionist, he must be expressing a belief that the nation is in mortal danger? Of course, a number of the most vociferous complaints about Alito’s signals come from folks who subscribe to their alleged content—that our nation faces a serious, indeed an “existential” threat, should Mr. Trump be elected to a second term. This concern parallels that of many others who find a similar threat in Trump’s possible re-election.
But there is a branch of sign theory that does deal with non-verbal signs of this sort extensively. Nonverbal communication is important enough to merit its own Boy Scouts’ merit badge. “The Signs, Signals and Codes merit badge covers a number of the nonverbal ways we communicate: emergency signaling, Morse code, American Sign Language, braille, trail signs, sports officiating hand signals, traffic signs, secret codes and more.” Quite a lot more, if you think about it: thumbs up, thumbs down, middle finger, cut throat, clenched fist, index finger sealing lips, etc., etc. When you come right down to it, signs, signals, and codes seem the very essence of Augustinian linguistic theory.
A major component of the preparation for the merit badge is the study of flag-talk, or semaphore. The word means “sign-bearing,” and signifies a system that tries to convey verbal messages by means of creating a conventional alphabet of corporeal gesture by waving colored flags. This system grows ever more obsolete in an age of electronic communication, but it still exists. The purpose is to achieve significant verbal communication over fairly long distances where the sender is visible but not audible, especially between ships at sea. The would-be communicator holds the brightly colored flags (usually red and yellow) and “spells” out the message by moving body and flags in conventionally agreed upon patterns. An adaptation of the technique for nighttime use employs flashing lights patterned to the alphabetical Morse code: most famously, SOS! You might say our nation began with such a signal: One if by land, two if by sea…
The subject of interest to the old Stoic logicians, and to their critic Augustine, was the possibility of precision—and thus lack of ambiguity—in human verbal constructs. But the “meaning” of flags, and of the motives for their display, is often anything but clear. So I must conclude that flag-waving is a rather poor way of communicating complex or nuanced ideas. It is also manifestly subject to gross misunderstanding and practically invites intentional distortion.
In a very crucial moment of Virgil’s Æneid, the hero’s meeting with Cumaean Sibyl, the hero begs that she deliver her prophecy in oral rather than in written form. We may find the implied idea that spoken language is invariably clearer than written language surprising; but we have no Demosthenes, no Cicero in our public conversations. I wish I could believe that the two verbal “debates” agreed upon by Presidents Biden and Trump promised substance and clarification, but on the basis of past experience, I cannot. It is that fear that my quotation marks hope to imply. More like bringing an unlighted candle into a dark room.
*Omnis doctrina vel rerum est vel signorum, sed res per signa discuntur.
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