Texts and the cultural value of truthfulness in Juri Lotman

By drawing on the work of Ju. Lotman and A. Piatigorsky, the pres- ent study examines two key concepts for the semiotics of culture: the notion of ‘cultural text’ and the cultural value of truthfulness ascribed to it. This work takes up the notion of cultural texts and traces the aspect of the mate- rial ‘fixation’ or ‘expression’ as one of the lynchpins of texts in Lotman and Piatigorsky’s thought. This study seeks to shed light on the function that the element of expression of texts plays in the context of a given culture. It argues that expression performs the function of the textual identity of truthfulness. Lotman’s idea that the surplus of expression is the distinguishing feature that separates cultural texts from nontexts as well as the value of truthfulness as- cribed to them is examined. The paper suggests that the element of the mate- rial expression of texts has been gradually lost and that today the difference between texts and nontexts is blurred.