ᲔᲜᲘᲡ ᲙᲠᲘᲖᲘᲡᲘ ᲗᲐᲜᲐᲛᲔᲓᲠᲝᲕᲔ ᲛᲡᲝᲤᲚᲘᲝᲨᲘ

Overview

This theoretical analysis examines the transformation of the linguistic sign through three sequential cultural-philosophical periods: modernism, postmodernism, and metamodernism. The study positions the sign as a symbiotic unity of content and expression, arguing that each period has destabilized this unity through distinct mechanisms. Modernism is characterized by formal experimentation that disrupts the expression plane while preserving social discourse content, postmodernism by content manipulation that fragments unified meaning into sub-discourses, and metamodernism by attempts to restore communicative function through oxymoronic conceptual unification. The analysis frames these developments as constituting a language crisis, wherein the dissolution of shared semantic frameworks impedes inter-subjective communication across what are termed virtual or divergent reality spaces.

Methods and approach

The investigation employs a semiotic framework derived from structural linguistics, treating the sign as a bipartite entity comprising content and expression. The methodological approach is historical-philosophical, tracing the deconstruction of sign components across three periodized cultural movements. For modernism, the analysis catalogs formal aesthetic movements including abstractionism, cubism, futurism, dadaism, avant-gardism, and symbolism to demonstrate disruption at the expression level. Postmodernism is characterized through identifying signature content-level phenomena: eclecticism, intertextuality, deconstruction, decentralization, hyper-reflection, author-reader boundary dissolution, temporal-spatial projection, and ironic or nihilistic orientation toward reality. Metamodernism is analyzed through its strategic deployment of oxymoronic constructions that unite contradictory semantic elements. The framework assumes that communicative viability depends on maintaining coherence between content and expression, and evaluates each period against this criterion.

Results

The analysis identifies a progressive fragmentation of linguistic and semiotic coherence across the three periods. Modernist experimentation is found to preserve communicative potential through maintaining content stability despite formal disruption. Postmodernism is characterized as producing a crisis state through content fragmentation that generates sub-discourses and virtual worlds lacking shared semantic ground, effectively rendering inter-discourse communication hindered or impossible. The postmodernist principle that everything is possible is interpreted as symptomatic of this content dissolution. Metamodernism is identified as an adaptive response attempting to restore language's communicative function through paradoxical conceptual strategies, specifically the construction of oxymoronic meanings that bridge contradictory semantic domains. However, these oxymoronic formations are found to create only illusory communication, enabling exchange solely within virtual realities rather than establishing genuine shared semantic frameworks. The trajectory from modernism through metamodernism thus represents escalating compromise of the sign's functional integrity.

Implications

The findings suggest fundamental challenges to linguistic communication in contemporary cultural conditions, where the dissolution of unified content and proliferation of sub-discourses fragment the common semantic ground necessary for mutual understanding. The metamodernist solution, while representing an attempt to preserve communicative function, is characterized as creating ambivalent and mentally problematic concepts that facilitate interaction only between segregated virtual realities rather than re-establishing authentic shared discourse. This has implications for understanding contemporary meaning-making practices, suggesting that apparent communication may mask underlying semantic incommensurability. The analysis positions the language crisis as structural rather than superficial, rooted in the progressive deconstruction of the sign itself across successive cultural-philosophical formations. The trajectory identified raises questions about the viability of restored semantic unity and whether communication under postmodern and metamodern conditions constitutes genuine intersubjective understanding or merely coordinated activity within incompatible frameworks.

Disclosure

• Research title: ᲔᲜᲘᲡ ᲙᲠᲘᲖᲘᲡᲘ ᲗᲐᲜᲐᲛᲔᲓᲠᲝᲕᲔ ᲛᲡᲝᲤᲚᲘᲝᲨᲘ
• Authors: რუსუდან ასათიანი
• Publication date: 2026-01-08
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.63410/jo2026/01
• OpenAlex record: View
• Image credit: Photo by Brecht Denil on Unsplash (Source • License)
• Disclosure: This post was generated by artificial intelligence. The original authors did not write or review this post.