312    Linda R. Waugh
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The general designation Physical Education and Athletics gives us the overall domain for which the phone numbers are relevant. This in effect defines the larger set of the subset-set diagram. And it comes as no surprise, I am sure, that one marked—unmarked relationship within this context is the female— male one, where the female is the marked. This is confirmed by an early listing — Mrs. Martha Arnett, Director of Women's Physical Education, Helen Newman Hall — and by the last major entry in the listing — Women's Physical Education. And in fact, one could ask oneself, upon reading these two entries: Is everything that is not women's physical education necessarily male (minus-interpretation) or coed (zero-interpretation) or physical education in and of itself with no regard to sex (also the zero-interpretation)? A careful decoding of the earlier designations shows that some are indeed the minus-interpretation: e.g., George D. Patte, Director of Men's Physical Education, Locker Room, Football Office, 150-lb Football Office; while others are the zero-interpretation: e.g., Richard Schultz, Director of Athletics, Bowling Office, Oxley Polo Arena, Squash Reservations, Lynah Rink', and others are a mixture of these: e.g., Swimming Pool— there are two swimming pools, one in Helen Newman Hall, listed under Women's Physical Education, and one in
Teagle Hall, listed under Swimming Pool They both have coed swimming hours and are the same size. But the Helen Newman Pool has some
women-only (marked) hours while the Teagle Hall pool has men-only hours (minus-interpretation of the unmarked). The Helen Newman Pbol is thus listed under Women's Physical Education {Swimming Office) while the Teagle Hall pool is listed under Swimming Pool with no designation of sex. Certain entries are also ambiguous: e.g., Sports Information — most likely if one wanted to find out about a women-only meet, one should call Women's Physical Education, but if the meet were taking place in Teagle Hall, which is the men's gym as well as the major location of facilities whether used by men or women, the decision becomes difficult. And, is the Physical Education Office to be viewed in the minus-interpretation or zero-interpretation?
Further discussion
Many investigators (including Lévi-Strauss, Needham, and others) have talked about cultural oppositions and resultant pairs as 'mutually exclusive' relations and yet if one puts it in terms of figure-ground or subset-set, one can see that this is not quite the right conceptualization. If one takes a typical pair (e.g., "death" ~"Iife"), then it looks mutually exclusive because there is no third possibility — it is an either/or situation,
I                                                                      Marked and unmarked   313
one is either alive or one is dead (leaving aside for the moment the
!     oxymorons living death or deadly life). But, it seems to me, if one were to
study not the fact that there is no other alternative, but rather the
;    symbolic investment each of the opposites gets, then it becomes clear that
I     the same type of marked ~ unmarked relation obtains. In a culture like
j     ours, in certain contexts, "life" is unmarked and "death" marked; and very
often "life" is unmarked in the sense of the zero-interpretation. Generally
speaking, we do not question at every moment of our lives whether the
j     next moment should include life or death, or whether especially we should
motivate our choice to live. Rather the assumption is that we will choose
"life", or better (zero-interpretation), that "life" will simply continue —
there is no choice to be made. On the other hand* the choice of death — e.g., suicide — is the marked one from the point of view of the culture as a whole. Generally speaking, the choice of life or the continuing to live does I     not need a motivation, while the choice of death must have a motivation.10 ;-    And for many people in the culture, life in general needs no motivation I     while death does; the continuance of life is generally not the cause for any ritual or ceremonial behavior, while the noncontinuance of life (death) is; i     and so on. In our linguistic usage, a phrase such as life is a mystery \    includes, of course, the potential for and the fact of death. So, while the 1     difference between life and death may seem to be a mutually exclusive one 1    (two separate and nonoverlapping categories), the semiotic status of the two is neither mutually exclusive nor is it simply a pairing of equals. Death is the marked (the included) element and the hierarchically dependent one. The non-mutually exclusive relation between two opposites should help to explain various puzzles that have plagued investigators in various fields. (     One I think is particularly important, since it is a general semiotic   , notion that cross-cuts various domains, is the opposition between "meta- M phor" and "metonymy" (similarity and contiguity). The terms metaphor fj (    and metohymy have proved to be notoriously slippery and various   I j     investigations have noted an overlap between them. Since we know that    1 there is no choice among equals in language, it would seem that, in poetry,    W J    for example, with its emphasis on parallelisms of various kinds, there may |    be a markedness relation with "metaphor" (similarity) unmarked and    }
"metonymy" (contiguity) marked, while in prose (and especially in so-ŕ called 'realistic', alias metonymic, prose) the markedness relation may be reversed. This could also help to explain why many literary semioticians ( interested in poetics speak only of metaphor — they often are using the term in its zero-interpretation to stand for the whole opposition. What we ť    need is an integrated discussion of "metonymy" and "metaphor" that