SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

More documents

Recommendations

Info

1 Peirce Divested for Nonintimates Truth as it walks abroad is always clothed in figures of which it divests itself for none but its intimates. —Charles Sanders Peirce (MS 634:18—19, 1909) Sign, Object, and Interprétant - THE SEMIOTICTHEORY of C. S. Peirce (1839—1914) is an attempt to explain ', the cognitive process of acquiring scientific knowledge as a pattern of communicative activity in which the dialogic partners are, indifferently, members of a community or sequential states of a single person's mind. 1 In linking the acquisition of knowledge to the structure of communication, Peirce fuses together the two poles of the classical semiotic heritage, the epistemologically focused tradition that studies the semeion or "natural" or "indicative sign" and the linguistically grounded tradition that studies the symbolon or "conventional symbol." 2 He accomplishes this fusion by arguing that there is no inherent incompatibility between logical inference through the manipulation of signs, which was the primary concern of the semeion tradition of the Stoics, for example, and the mediated communication of meaning by means of conventional symbols, a basic concern of the symbolon tradition as expressed in Aristotle's On Interpretation and Poetics. For Peirce this knowledge-communication process involves a relationship of progressive adequation between two fundamentally opposed elements, "objects" and "signs." All knowledge at a given cognitive or historical moment must be /about something with which the knower is already acquainted to some degree I and in some respect. Opposed to this presupposed object are forms of representation (verbal, graphic, gestural, etc.) which stand for, substitute for, or exhibit-^ the object in such a way that the next stage of comprehension will consist of a further developed representation of the same object. For Peirce the class of phenomena which can function as signs is extremely broad, including "pictures, symptoms, words, sentences; books, libraries, signals, orders of command, microscopes, legislative representatives, musical concertos, performances of these, in short, whatever is adapted to transmitting to a person an impression that vir- ^ tually emanates from something external to itself" (MS 634:17—18). 3 For our 3
4 I Foundations ofPeircean Semiotics Peirce Divested for Nonintimates I 5 cognitions to involve true knowledge, however, object and sign must be connected in such a way that the former "determines"—specifies or specializes—the character of the latter which represents it. So there must be some kind of prin- •J cipled linkage or reason, what Peirce calls the "ground," between the two if the sign is to become a mediate realization of the object in this process of constantly developing knowledge-communication. There are, thus, two opposed yet interlocking vectors involved in semiosis, - the vector of determination from object to sign and the vector of representation from sign to object. If these vectors are brought into proper relation, then knowledge of objects through signs is possible: "I shall endeavor consistently to employ the word 'object', namely, to mean that which a sign, so far as it fulfills the function of a sign, enables one who knows that sign, and knows it as a sign, to know" (MS 599:31-32). The insertion of the phrase "and knows it as a sign" might seem at first to be introducing an unnecessary complexity into the situation. If a sign displays its object as the object has determined it to be represented for some further interpreting sign, why is it necessary that the knower need not only know the sign but also know it as a sign? Peirce's point is a subtle yet crucial one for his entire argument: "A sign does not function as a sign unless it be understood as a sign" (MS 599:32). In other words, two parts of reality might be in a relationship of mutual determination and representation, but unless the knower had some inde- ! pendent knowledge of this fact, there would be no sense in which one of the parts V could function as a sign of the other part for this interpreter. So signs must be interpreted in order to be signs, but their "significant character which causes them to be so interpreted" (MS 462:86), namely, the ground, is the basis for this interpretation, when it occurs. While I am out golfing the scorecard accidentally falls out of my shirt pocket and flutters several feet to the left; my partner drops bits of grass from her raised hand and carefully observes them flutter to the left. Now, the wind will act to blow both the scorecard and the grass to the left quite apart from my partner's interpretation of the movement of the grass as a sign of the wind direction so as to aim her tee shot with the proper compensation. In this elementary semiotic situation, the relationship between the object (the wind blowing in a certain direction) and the sign (the grass blowing in a certain direction) is useful only to the golfer who is already acquainted with the object (that is, that there is this physical phenomenon of wind) and who further understands the ground involved ' in the wind-grass connection, namely, a combination of physical connectedness between wind and grass, what Peirce calls "indexicality," and of formal resem- * blance between wind direction and grass direction, what Peirce calls "iconicity." The importance of this point is that, for Peirce, the vectors of determination and representation are each more complex than suggested initially. Determination does not just flow from object to sign but from the object through the sign to some further action or mental representation, what Peirce terms the "interprétant," which is thus mediately determined by the same object (CP 6.347). The interprétant is the translation, explanation, meaning, or conceptualization of the sign-object relation in a subsequent sign representing the same object; a sign which is highly determined is one which offers little "latitude of interpretation" (MS 283:136) for the translating sign. In the golfing example, my partner's tee shot will be determined, that is, causally influenced, by the wind direction, but to the degree that her shot is directed by an aim corrected because of the knowledge afforded through the falling grass, the shot is mediatedly determined by the wind. Peirce's frequent metaphor for this mediate determination is skewing or slanting, so that the effect of the object operates on the interpreting sign through the mediating role of the sign. What about the vector of representation? If the falling grass is known "as a sign," then the tee shot will also be a representation, but not simply of the physical fact of wind direction (though the shot will, of course, be acted upon by the wind). It will display or exhibit—perhaps for the golfers waiting to tee off next—the complex semiotic relationship of "taking account of the wind." In other words, what is actually represented is the linkage or ground relating the wind and the grass: or, the object becomes the "grass taken semiotically." Thus",^ the vector of representation is also more complex than originally stated, since' each subsequent representation in the semiotic chain represents the prior object-'! sign relation, taken itself as a higher-level semiotic object. Symbols and Legisigns The next step Peirce takes in the argument is truly revolutionary. He postulates that there is a kind of sign in which the ground between object and sign would not exist at all unless interpreted by a subsequent sign to be of some kind. Recall the previous example: the wind continues to determine the direction of falling grass whether or not we read it as a sign; when interpreted semiotically, the ground is understood to be the causal patterning of grass direction by wind direction. To repeat, the grass would not function as a sign unless interpreted semiotically, but when interpreted the interpretation is based on the independently existing grounds between object and sign (that is, the indexicality and iconicity). Now consider the example of the word book, a linguistic sign standing for a class of objects consisting (roughly) of printed pages bound together and found in libraries. What is the ground between this particular phonic shape and this particular class of objects? In what sense does this class of objects determine any of the identifying properties found in the word as a sign? Peirce's solution to these question is his concept of the "symbol," a kind of complex semiotic entity in which there is an irreducibly triadic relation among the sign, the object, and the interprétant such that the sign and object would not be in any particular
Page 1 and 2: A D V A N C E S IN S E M I O T I C
Page 3 and 4: Contents Acknowledgments Introducti
Page 5 and 6: x I Acknowledgments Acknowledgments
Page 7 and 8: xiv I Introduction Introduction I x
Page 9: PART I Foundations of Peircean Semi
Page 13 and 14: 8 I Foundations ofPeircean Semiotic
Page 15 and 16: iz I Foundations of Peircean Semiot
Page 17 and 18: 16 I Foundations of Peircean Semiot
Page 21 and 22: Z4 I Foundations of Peircean Semiot
Page 23 and 24: z8 I Foundations of Peircean Semiot
Page 27 and 28: )6 I Foundations of Peircean Semiot
Page 33 and 34: 48 I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Page 35 and 36: jz I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Page 37 and 38: jo' I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Page 39 and 40: 6o I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Page 49 and 50: 8o I Signs in Ethnographic Context
Page 57 and 58: PART III Comparative Perspectives o
Page 59 and 60: ioi I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 61 and 62:
io6 I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 63 and 64:
no I Comparative Perspectives on Co
Page 65 and 66:
né I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 67 and 68:
izo I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 69 and 70:
IZ4 I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 71 and 72:
iz8 I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 73 and 74:
i) z I Comparative Perspectives on
Page 75 and 76:
* .. ii : e09& 136 I Comparative Pe
Page 77 and 78:
140 I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 79 and 80:
144 ' Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 81 and 82:
148 I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 83 and 84:
ijz I Comparative Perspectives on C
Page 85 and 86:
PART IV Social Theory and Social Ac
Page 87 and 88:
i6o I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 89 and 90:
164 I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 91 and 92:
i68 I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 93 and 94:
lyz I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 95 and 96:
ij6 I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 97 and 98:
i8o I Social Theory and Social Acti
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
192. I Social Theory and Social Act
Page 105 and 106:
196 I Notes to pages 63-J35 Notes t
Page 107 and 108:
zoo I References References I zoi D
Page 109 and 110:
zo4 I References References I 205 c
Page 111 and 112:
zo8 I References References I Z09 J
Page 113 and 114:
i n I References References I 213 .
Page 115 and 116:
zi 6 I References References I ziy
Page 117 and 118:
Index I Z2J Index Advertising: prag
show all

SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?