SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

)o I Foundations of Peircean Semiotics
Peirce's Concept of Semiotic Mediation I 31
adopted a theory of "medium of communication" which, in some respects at
least, nullifies the usefulness of the overall approach to semiotic mediation for
disciplines other than formal logic.
In Peirce's early writings on semiotics the mediate position of the representamen
between the object and the interprétant is partially obscured by his philosophical
struggle to solve the essentially Kant-jan P!Ifbjprn_nf_hQw abstract forms
can become realized in such a way that consciousness is modified to some degree.
' As early as îTfSï~nê was convinced of the necessity for some level of expression
in which "Form," quality, or pure meaning is united with substance or sensuous
matter, a union roughly parallel to Kant's discussion of the "unity of apperception":
If the object is expressed purely, all of the abstraction it contained (the expression)
would be meaning. Pure expression therefore is pure meaning. But this
the mind would not notice for the mind notices through resemblance &c difference.
. . . For an abstraction to emerge into consciousness, it is necessary that
it should be contained in a manifold of sense. . . . Abstraction, therefore, to
become modification of consciousness needs to be combined with that which
modification of consciousness as yet unrelated to any abstraction is, that is to
the perfectly unthought manifold of sensation. Well, how shall abstraction be
combined with manifold of sensation? By existing as a form for matter, by
expression. (MS 1105, 1861; variant in W 1:85)
Peirce found the "necessity of expression" not just in language but in other cultural
forms as well: "Every religion must exist in some forms or rites in order to
find the least realization" (MS 1105, 1861).
From this determination of matter according to form by expression Peirce
deduced an ontology consisting of three elements, things, forms, and representations,
related so that representations stand for things by virtue of or in respect
to forms. Form or Logos is the quality or characteristic that, when linked with
a representation, constitutes its "connotation" or "intension"; Object is some
real or fictitious thing which, when linked with a representation, constitutes its
^denotation" or "extension." Peirce's model of representation here is closely connected
with his concern for the logical properties of propositions, in which the
thing denoted by the subject of the proposition is said to embody the form connoted
by the predicate (W 1:288, 1865). And from this ontological tripartition
based on propositional form Peirce further deduced the three necessary "references"
or "correlates" of every representation: a representation "stands for" its
Object, it "realizes" its Form, and it "translates" an equivalent representation,
as shown in Figure 2.2.
The third correlate of a representation is, thus, another representation in
which the product of the first representation's denotation and connotation is
translated or communicated; this product Peirce termed the "information" of the
representation. And, finally, given the distinction between denotation and con-
relate or
representation
(representamen)
' \J Logos or Form
\1 (ground)
object
equivalent representation
(interprétant)
Figure 1.2. Correlates of representation
notation, that is, between that about which something is said and that which is
said about something, Peirce produced a tripartition of types of representations.
First, "copies" or "analogues" are representations that connote without denoting
by virtue of resembling in themselves their objects (for example, pictures, statues,
and hieroglyphs); second, "signs" or "marks" are representations that denote
without connoting on the basis of some previous fixity of convention (as when
a proper name is assigned in baptism); third, "symbols" are representations that
denote by virtue of connoting and that, when presented to the mind, immediately
call up a conception of the object, not because of previous convention or because
of formal resemblance but rather by virtue of the equivalence relations to another
representation or symbolic system (W 1:304, 1865).
The semiotic theory proposed by Peirce in the late 1860s stresses the role of
cognitive representation as the synthesis of form and object and depends largely
on the logical analysis of propositions, in which the form is an abstract quality
predicated of an object denoted by the subject (CP 1.548, 1867). Although
Peirce often made clear that his notion of representation included everything,
mental as well as nonmental, that possesses attributes (WCP 1.326, 1865), he
gave little attention to the sensible or material qualities of signs in the nonmental
category, or what he later termed the representamen. In fact, the need for some
"medium of outward expression" (CP 5.284, 1868) is admitted only as something
that may be necessary to translate a "thought-sign" to another person; and
these material qualities are, in themselves, only a residue of nonsemiotic properties
of the sign that play no positive role in the sign's representational function.
It was from this theory of representation that Peirce developed the ontologî 5
cal categories presented in his 1867 paper "On a New List of Categories" (CP
1
-545-59). The three correlates or references of a representation (form, object,
and equivalent representation) become here the three universal conceptions or"!
categories: reference to a "Ground," reference to a "Correlate," and reference!
to an "Interprétant." In this revised terminology, ground is the quality or respect \
in which the representation stands for its object or correlate; and the interprétant 1
is the mediating representation that "represents the relate to be a representation j
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