SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

18 I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics
Peirce Divested for Nonintimates I 19
index cannot be an argument (blocking out two possibilités in the middle row).
The resulting ten sign possibilities are given below, along with a concrete illustration
for each class:
(i) (rhematic iconic) qualisign; feeling of red
(2.) (rhematic) iconic sinsign; individual diagram
— (3) rhematic indexical sinsign; spontaneous cry: ouch!
(4) dicent (indexical) sinsign; telephone ring
(5) (rhematic) iconic legisign; architectural order
«- (6) rhematic indexical legisign; type of shout: hello!
(7) dicent indexical legisign; vendor's cry: beer here!
— (8) rhematic symbol (legisign); the noun book
— (9) dicent symbol (legisign); proposition
(ro) argument (symbolic legisign); syllogism
Placing certain words in parentheses indicates that they are not essential in defining
a sign class because of certain logical implications (identical with the
principles of exclusion used above). Thus a qualisign, being a First, must be an
icon, and being an icon it can only be a rheme. Similarly at the other extreme of
the hierarchy, an argument must be a symbol, and being a symbol it must be a
legisign.
" That this list of sign classes was generated by a method of exclusion should
not be taken to imply that the resulting types do not have positive connections
and interactions as well. Peirce specifies three such positive linkages (though not
with these labels): replication, composition, and downshifting. Replication refers
to the necessity that all legisigns generate replicas of themselves (in fact, to be a
legisign is to be something that produces tokens of its type). If a sign is classed
as an indexical legisign, for example, we know that its replica will be classed as
an indexical sinsign—although, as noted previously, this replica will not have
identical properties with the "run of the mill" indexical sinsign (e.g., telephone
ring). Composition refers to the internal complexity of certain sign classes such
that they necessarily contain or embody lower-ranking signs. The dicent symbol,
a proposition for example, is built up of two rhemes, a rhematic symbol (com-
\ mon noun) as well as a rhematic indexical legisign (demonstrative pronoun), the
\ former "to express its information" (CP 2.26z) and the latter "to indicate the
\ subject of that information." Finally, downshifting refers to the tendency of cer-
\ tain of the classes to be systematically apperceived by their interprétants as being
\ lower-ranking signs. A rhematic indexical legisign will regularly be interpreted
as if it were only a (rhematical) iconic legisign. The that in the phrase that
book,
though interprétable at all only because it is in proximity to its object, the book
being denoted, functions to determine an interprétant which represents it as
being related to this book by virtue of formal resemblance, thus not as picking
out a particular object (the task of a dicent) but as stipulating a possible class of
objects sharing the same feature, namely, whatever might possibly be "relatively
far from speaker." In order to distinguish regular members of a sign class from
other variants or varieties that fall into this class because of these processes of
replication, composition, or downshifting, Peirce sometimes calls these latter instances
"degenerate" signs—a term derived from mathematics rather than from
morals.
An important implication of Peirce's third trichotomy (rheme, dicent, argument)
for historical analysis is that the identical representamen can shift ranks in
different periods. Jappy (1984:23—25) gives a particularly clear example of this:
for a nonspecialist modern museum goer, the presence of ultramarine pigment on
a Quattrocento altarpiece painting of a Madonna is interpreted as a rhematic
iconic sinsign, that is, a sign that is a particular occurrence, that stands for its
dark blue object by resemblance, and that can only be interpreted as representing
some possible original object. For the contemporary viewer, however, this pigment
generated several additional interprétants: knowing that this pigment was
rare and expensive, the contemporary viewer would interpret its presence as a
dicent indexical sinsign pointing to the wealthy patron who commissioned the
work; and sensitive both to the place of ultramarine in the overall color code of
the period and to the position of particular shades of ultramarine, the contemporary
viewer would interpret the pigment as a replica of a dicent indexical legisign,
since the color is part of a system of general regularities. Note that, in this
example, the passage of time corresponds to a lowering
of the rank of the sign,
as the richness of "collateral knowledge" available to the viewer decreases.
Cultural symbols with embedded iconic properties are frequently interpreted
as less than fully symbolic, that is, as "naturalized" signs that inherently, rather
than conventionally, signal their object (Herzfeld 1992:69; Lotman 1985:56).
One limitation of Peirce's view is that it does not allow for the possibility of the
opposite to happen, the "upshifting" of signs as a result of the structure of interprétants.
But this is precisely what happens in cases of the "conventionalizing"'
of relatively motivated signs (see Chapter 8).
Always sensitive to the difficulties involved in grasping thèse interlocking
regularities among sign classes, Peirce tries to ease the student's mind: "It is a
nice problem to say to what class a given sign belongs; since all the circumstances
of the case have to be considered. But it is seldom requisite to be very accurate;
for if one does not locate the sign precisely, one will easily come near enough to
its character for any ordinary purpose of logic" (CP 2.265).
Scientific Knowledge and Cultural Belief
For Peirce, semiotic relations are anchored in the linkage between signs as
constituents of cognitions and external reality, the character of the world "whatever
you or I or any man or men may think of them to be" (MS 296:18). This