2. Subsemiospheres and Social Reproduction
Jurij Lotman introduced the semiosphere. In simple terms, it is the total semiotic space where all sign processes exist. Similar to how Vernadsky's biosphere contains the total space of life within which there are individual organisms, the semiosphere is the total space of semiosis. Though, of course, Lotman's analysis more focused on literature. For what concerns us, though - social reproduction - the principle that Lotman identified is still highly useful - we can scale it much further than literature, in much narrower areas. Within the semiosphere, we can observe systems where signs are reproduced in a structured way - these bounded systems are 'semiospheres within the semiosphere' - so, we can simply call them subsemiospheres. Empirically, what we recognise as social groups correlate with them - a family, a workspace, a community, a professional field, a political organisation, all have their own "protocols" for semiosis. A language is its own subsemiosphere as well - or even jargon within a language - any structure which bends semiosis around itself is one. What unifies these otherwise disparate phenomena is the observable coordination in the reproduction of signs. And thus, it is within the subsemiosphere that the concepts we have so far established - signs, semiosis, mediation - become concretely possible to use in socio-semiotic analysis.
Codes
What is the mechanism through which interpretation within a subsemiosphere is stabilised? How does a subsemiosphere reproduce itself? Let us explore a case of material constraint to answer this: let's take the following example of 'society' overall: a society is immediately "regulated" by a set of material constraints: first and foremost, it must reproduce its own conditions for existence. If the condition of producing and distributing food, stabilising expectations, creating predictable behaviour, reproducing labour power, coordinated work and the rest is not met, then society will inevitably collapse, and stop being a society. Thus, the societies which are to exist are to be regulated by this need. A 'pressure' arises from this material constraint, and this pressure must be mediated semiotically if coordinated social action is to be possible (since, again, all social reality is semiotically mediated.)
Distinctions that stabilise between 'productive' and 'unproductive' activity arise, this distinction itself is a code. It is not necessarily something the individuals who interact with the subsemiosphere must be able to articulate. It is just the stable "protocol" of how signs are reproduced in the subsemiosphere of said society in our example. So, a code is a type of sign: more precisely, it is a kind of 'meta-sign,' through which we interpret other signs as operable or inoperable. It doesn't stand for an object in the world in the way many signs do, since it stands for how signs are to be taken.
A code is also the mechanism of selection. To say that a code determines which interpretants are reproduced is the same as saying that it selects: they are one process described from two angles. The code is the protocol and the protocol does selection. Every subsemiosphere reproduces itself through its codes, and what those codes factually select for is the subsemiosphere's operative reality, regardless of what participants believe the codes are for.
Nominal and Operative Object-Ideals
Every subsemiosphere is organised around an aim, or has some justification for its existence: an object-ideal. But the two senses of this term refer to different things and the relationship between them is the main issue of socio-semiotic analysis.
The nominal object-ideal is the justificatory force/aim as it is semiotically operative in the self-understanding of a subsemiosphere's participants - in other words, what they believe the subsemiosphere is for. This is not necessarily uniform across participants since each individual may carry a slightly different justificatory sign, but what matters analytically is the shared representamen around which the subsemiosphere organises. So, the sign that functions as the common justificatory reference point, even if individual interpretants of it vary. For a Marxist party, this is "the liberation of the proletariat." Elsewhere, "democracy," or "the free market."
The operative object-ideal is what selection factually produces. It is necessary as an analytical category - we identify it empirically by observing what the subsemiosphere's activity actually moves toward, what its codes actually reproduce. A party that claims to pursue liberation but factually reproduces its own apparatus has "reproduction of the party apparatus" as its operative object-ideal, whether anyone within it would describe it that way or not, or even realise it as such.
Permanent Divergence
The nominal and operative object-ideals never fully coincide, and the perfect correspondence between them is only theoretical. In practice the moment a code mediates between an aim and action, it already introduces its own reproductive logic. Codes that reproduce themselves are the ones that persist by their own definition - so, some level of divergence between the nominal and operative object-ideals is the baseline of any semiotically mediated collective activity at all.
What determines how far the operative object-ideal can diverge from the nominal? We can use a kind of verifiability gap: what is the distance between the nominal object-ideal's formulation and any checkable state of affairs that would constitute correspondence with it?
If we consider "the liberation of the proletariat" as a nominal object-ideal, without theoretical understanding, it is so abstract that nearly any action undertaken by a party can be narrated as compatible with it. A purge of internal dissidents? It protects the revolution from saboteurs - liberation requires discipline! The suppression of a workers' strike? The workers have been misled by counter-revolutionary elements - liberation requires ideological clarity! The enrichment of the party apparatus? The vanguard must be sustained in order to lead - liberation requires institutional strength! So, the representamen stays the same and "liberation" is invoked everywhere, but what selection factually produces (the operative object-ideal) has long shifted entirely toward the reproduction of the party apparatus itself. The abstractness of the nominal object-ideal is what made this shift invisible.
We can take the protocolic nature of religious law as a counterexample: the halakhic command "do not kindle fire on the Sabbath." Either fire is kindled or it is not. The gap between the nominal object-ideal's formulation and a checkable state of affairs is minimal. This does not mean interpretation is static since it also evolves constantly, but the verifiability gap is narrow enough that one cannot plausibly claim that kindling a fire is, in fact, a form of not kindling a fire. The code's concreteness constrains how far the operative object-ideal can diverge without the divergence becoming observable.
The Parasitic Tendency
As the operative object-ideal starts to shift towards the subsemiosphere's own reproduction as its main output, the nominal object-ideal turns into justificatory residue, so it stops constraining selection. And the wider that this gap becomes, the more space opens for parasitic actors to enter the structure and direct its resources towards their own object-ends rather than the ones of the structure. Once the nominal object-ideal has little selecting power left, the subsemiosphere turns into a viable host for parasites.
The parasitic tendency is always present as a potential. Any subsemiosphere whose codes have stabilised carries the structural conditions for it because codes that reproduce themselves are the ones that persist and divergence will always tend to widen over time. What constrains it is the verifiability gap. If the gap is narrow, divergence is observable and easier to defeat, but when the gap is wide, divergence is fast and difficult to constrain, often invisible.
Material constraints also constrain the parasitic tendency, but independently of the code. A famine does not care about the nominal object-ideal or your code structure, it will intervene regardless. Material reality cannot be narrated away, or rather, it can be narrated away, but people still starve. This is the selection pressure that keeps the model "honest." Codes can mediate how material constraints are interpreted and responded to but they cannot abolish material constraints themselves.
Structural Conclusions
Beginning with the triadic model we have established that all meaning operates through semiosis - the processual relation of representamen, object, and interpretant - and that social reality is semiotically mediated throughout. From Lotman's semiosphere we derived the subsemiosphere - the bounded system in which signs are reproduced in a structured way, and to which all durable social groups correlate empirically. Inside of subsemiospheres codes function as both the protocol of sign reproduction and the mechanism of selection, these are one process as we have established. Selection is always material - codes do not float above material reality. Material constraints also intervene independently of any code.
Every subsemiosphere carries a nominal object-ideal (its average justificatory sign) and an operative object-ideal (what its codes factually select for) - they never fully coincide. The verifiability gap is the distance between the nominal object-ideal and any checkable state of affairs, it determines how far this divergence can proceed before becoming observable, and therefore how vulnerable the structure is to parasitic capture.
The decisive variable is never the people but the semiotic structure of the ideal around which they organise. Humanistic movements have turned parasitic consistently since they organise around nominal object-ideals with no checkable referent.