SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang
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6 I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics Peirce Divested for Nonintimates<br />
J relationship if not for their being represented as being so related. There is no<br />
reason inherent in the nature of the phonic form book why it should be appropriate<br />
for referring to this class of objects (indeed, other languages equally successfully<br />
use other linguistic forms), nor is there any physical connection to transmit<br />
the vector of determination from object to sign. A symbol is, thus, a fully<br />
"conventional" sign that "represents its object solely by virtue of being represented<br />
to represent it by the interprétant which it determines" (MS 599:43).<br />
Our everyday experience as speakers of a language confirms this. A person<br />
î who does not know a foreign language is able to hear the sounds of that language<br />
jj but has no grasp of the meanings of words or sentences and cannot utter sounds<br />
in functionally appropriate ways. So for linguistic signs, all very good examples<br />
\ol Peircean symbols, the interprétant consists of the rules of the relatively invari-<br />
' ant linguistic coding shared by members of the language community. Book has<br />
the meaning it does for speakers of English only because the language community<br />
accepts this convention. Contrast this example with the previous example of the<br />
falling grass: if the golfer fails to recognize (to the detriment of his or her score!)<br />
the semiotic function of this sign, the grass will continue to be blown by the<br />
wind. But if a community of speakers does not accept a convention according to<br />
which book stands for bound printed pages found in libraries, this particular<br />
form has absolutely no status as a meaningful entity of any sort. As Peirce explains,<br />
symbols are<br />
( those signs which are made to be signs, and to be precisely the signs that they<br />
\ are, neither by possessing any decisive qualities [i.e., icons] nor by embodying<br />
I effects of any special causation [i.e., indices], but merely by the certainty that<br />
\ they will be interpreted as signs, and as just such and such signs. (MS 298:12-13 )<br />
S As is clear from this quotation, Peirce envisioned the triad of icon, index,<br />
{and symbol to form a nested hierarchical set. The internal construction of this<br />
set can best be understood from four perspectives. The first concerns the requirements<br />
for completeness found in the three members of the set. An icon "is fitted<br />
to be a sign by virtue of possessing in itself certain qualities which it would<br />
equally possess if the interprétant and the object did not exist at all" (MS 7:14);<br />
without its object an icon could not function as a sign, but as a sign it has the<br />
characteristics it does independently of any reason or force exerted by the object<br />
or by the interprétant. Next, an index has the qualities it does apart from its<br />
\ interprétant but not from its object, which must be in a relation of spatiotemporal<br />
contiguity with it. And finally a symbol would not have any of its characteristics<br />
if the object or interprétant were subtracted. Thus, the symbol, as a necessarily<br />
triadic relation, has the greatest internal complexity of the three signs. A<br />
second way of viewing the triad is to compare their respective foregrounded as-<br />
1 pects. For an icon the ground appears most prominently; for an index the object<br />
1<br />
attracts our attention; and for a symbol the interprétant is the focus of interest.<br />
Third, the triad corresponds to Peirce's ontological triad of Firstness, Secondness,<br />
and Thirdness, three degrees of reality which he believes exhaust the universe:<br />
Firsts are qualitative possibilities; Seconds are reactive objects; and Thirds<br />
sentations/The ground of an icon is a First, the ground of an index is a Second,<br />
and the ground of a symbol is a Third. 4<br />
And, fourth, we can observe the compositional<br />
"syntax" (CP 2.262) of these three kinds of semiotic relations. Every<br />
index, in order to convey information, must embody an icon. The falling grass is<br />
an index of the wind, but it is also an icon in that the direction of the grass's fallj<br />
resembles the direction of the wind. (Think of this in these terms: an index di-t<br />
rects the mind to some aspect of reality and an icon provides some information .<br />
about it.) And a symbol must embody an icon and an index, the former to express<br />
the information and the latter to indicate the object to which this informal '<br />
tion pertains. 5<br />
The postulation of the symbol as requiring the role of the interpretant's imputing<br />
a conventional relationship between sign and object introduces a further<br />
wrinkle involving the status of the sign itself, that is, viewed apart from the signobject<br />
relation. There appears to be a fundamental difference in status between<br />
the action of falling grass and the action of uttering the word book, namely, that<br />
in the latter case the identity of the sign, as stipulated in the rules of the language,<br />
is not dependent upon any particular instance of uttering these sounds. The word ' f<br />
I pronounce this morning is the "same" word you pronounce tomorrow; the<br />
word printed on the first line of a page is the "same" word when printed on the<br />
last line of the page. So linguistic symbols are "general signs," that is, signs which<br />
have the identity they have (in this case, specified by the code) independently of<br />
any concrete speech events or contextual application. The conventions of a language<br />
do not stipulate the meaning of book as dependent upon any particular<br />
circumstances of someone's using the word in conversation or in writing; and<br />
should no one pronounce the word for a year or should someone go around erasing<br />
all occurrences of it in written works, the word itself would continue to be<br />
part of the language:<br />
A symbol is itself a kind and not a single thing. You can write down the word<br />
"star" but that does not make you the creator of the word, nor if you erase it<br />
have you destroyed the word. The word lives in the minds of those who use it.<br />
Even if they are all asleep, it exists in their memory. (MS 404:45)<br />
Contrast this with the grass example, where the sign is an actual physical event ;<br />
and is not an instance of a more general representational form.<br />
Peirce developed a technical vocabulary to describe these phenomena: a sign<br />
which is an occurring event and for which "accidents of existence make it a sign"<br />
(MS 339:248t) is a "sinsign" (a sin-gular thing) or "token"; and a sign which<br />
is a "definitely significant Form" (CP 4.537) for producing and interpreting in-<br />
are necessarilyitriadic phenomena, including rules, laws, mediations, and repreé