a totality of semiotic interactions, those included (mythologized we could say) and those unincluded; the biosemiotic here becomes a prime example - but of course not just that - just as the definition of life (the canguilhem/bichat death-defining) does little to separate and accurately delimit (paradigmatics...), so its "unique" processes have to find parallels in matter that's made of what it's made of. the radiatory semiotic, the mating call, the oil-slicked expression of water-ducks.
as sensationalism - visuality perhaps - makes fodder for mythologization, so the heterosemiotic becomes acceptable insofar as it fills the role of the mythical icon; so the victim-duck becomes a medial other as a definition and a kind of textual experiment (foucault defining the other); but the mythologized semiotic becomes "all" the duck is (evidently the extent of the barthesian semiotic)
the suffering of the duck is the suffering of anti-trends whose stakes are invested in aspects of the mythological image;
if the othered is made appropriable, it seems to me the essence of this delineation is just that - the delineation, its perimeters, the edges of its definition - not only to define the very fluxual normative of the semiotic itself, but to both point to and denigrate its primacy in the formulations that give it its particular definition. the digust of images, gratuities, provocations that have no relevance to our lives - that, indeed, define its arbitarities and contingent finalities.