SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

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