semiotic function

“Thus we tend to endorse what is ultimately a heteronomous conception of language, understood as a mapping instrument which does not find its justification in itself, but constantly needs to rely on an external reference to justify its function. Yet meaningful signs (including those belonging to natural languages) do not clothe a pre-existing infosphere, they constitute it, and a long intellectual tradition, going from von Humboldt to Chomsky, has called attention to this fundamentally constructionist nature of semiotic codes, whereby languages ontologically incorporate reality, rather than just describing it. It seems that no philosophy of language with a narrowly aesthetic approach (i.e. representational or communication-oriented, in the technical sense just introduced) can hope to succeed in explaining the semiotic function.” (Luciano Floridi. Philosophy and Computing. pp. 115-116)