SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

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