Peirce and Hjelmslev: The Two Semiotics

Herman Parret
Belgian National Science Foundation
Universities of Leuven and Antwerp

ABSTRACT

Two traditions seem to have developed separately and without interpenetration in

the 'semiotic landscape'. That is, Anglo-saxon semioticians consider the Peircean
framework to provide the adequate conceptual apparatus for their empirical research,
whereas the so-called Continental semioticians refer to the sign theory in Saussure and
in its interpretation by Hjelmslev (for instance, the Ecole s~miotique de Paris: A.J.
Greimas and followers). The two orientations, apparently, have ignored each other and
manifested mutual distrust. It may, therefore, prove to be of importance and interest
to go back to the central intuitions of Peirce, on the one hand, and of Saussure/
Hjelmslev, on the other, in order to weigh possible solidarities and contrasts between
them. The evaluation of their projects, methods, and results could, thus, lead to a
more balanced view. And the purpose of my paper is to get the best out of the
adequate insights from both sides, and to make som suggestions of how the semioticians
from the Peircean and Saussuro-Hjelmslevian school can remove themselves from their
isolationist positions. In the couse of my discussion, the objective of comparing and
homologating (in part) the two semiotics will be carried out from three angles: f'Lrst,
the context of origin of both semiotics, then the typology of sign relations in Peirce
and Saussure/Hjelmslev, and finally the impact of pragmaticism on both semiotic
orientations.

S E M I O T I C S AS A P A R A D I G M A N D T H E D I V E R S I T Y O F S E M I O T I C S

Semiotics can be said to be a paradigm in the history o f philosophical and

scientific ideas. I take ' p a r a d i g m ' in the sense o f K u h n (1970), with the vaguely
Hegelian c o n n o t a t i o n that the succession o f paradigms is teleological, i.e., gives
evidence o f progress, i m p r o v e m e n t and intensification o f reflexion. Metaphysics
(or o n t o l o g y ) , E p i s t e m o l o g y and Semiotics are three successive paradigms, or three
types o f Protb Philosophia (First Philosophy), realized within the history o f h u m a n
thought. To put labels and names on it, one could say that first there is the
p h i l o s o p h y o f being (let us say, Platonic and Aristotelian ontologies), then there is
the p h i l o s o p h y o f knowledge, in fact, o f the knowing sub/ect ( o f which Kant is the
218 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

prototype), and finally there is the philosophy of the sign, or the sign-function, or of
significance. (Let me mention here the strangely combined group of Frege, Wit-
tgenstein, Peirce and Saussure.) Thought has been dominated for a long time by the
desire of grasping the structure of reality as a set of objects, states of affairs, and
events pre-existing autonomously and independently from any intellectual and
reflexive reconstruction. Reacting against this metaphysical myth is the epistemol-
ogical motivation where reality is seen to be shaped by cognition, intellectual activity
and theoretical (philosophical-scientific) languages, and where subjectivity (i.e., the
knowing subject or the autoreflexive consciousness) is a condition sine qua non for
any possible structuring of the world and of ontological systematicity. The force of
the third paradigm - the semiotic one - opposes the primacy of subjectivity which
made, from Descartes to Husserl, Epistemology Prot6 Philosophia. Within the new
paradigm, it is the sign-function - signifying discourse, meaningful language use -
that becomes the condition of all knowledge, and even of subjectivity itself and its
correlate, the objective world.
The least one can say is that, on the level of this third paradigm, the sign-
function is the possibility condition of the interpretation of the world and especially
of the intersubjective validity of this interpretation. The sign-function is, in fact, a
mediating function between the interpreter and the world. To give this foundational
importance to the sign systems, or to language as the prototype of semiosis, is at the
same time a criticism of classical metaphysics where the autonomy and independence
of structured reality is presupposed, and of epistemology where the autonomy and
independence of the structuring subjectivity is implied. I should add here that the
succession of paradigms is not chronological. The Stoics developed a theory of
semeion, and Locke, Condillac and many philosophical grammarians in the 17th
and 18th centuries have a semiotic view of language and meaning production, so long
before Frege/Wittgenstein/Peirce/Saussure. There is no historical contingency in this
succession of the three paradigms, but an internal logic. Indeed, the logical order of
the paradigmatical entities is: being, knowing, signifying/communicating. First, a
transparent discussion of the nature and structure of being seems possible, generating
the problem of skepticism and the aporetics of being and non-being (or nothing).
As a result of this complication, the status of knowledge and objective truth has to
be discussed. In the following stage, a theory of communication of intersubjectively
valid knowledge by means of systems of expression (or of signs), i.e., systems of
meaningful entities, is developed. The succession of the three Prot~ Philosophia
implies, in fact, a logic of radicalization, but, again, in a Hegelian-dialectic sense: at
the level of Semiotics, the former stages are not fully lost or forgotten: one cannot
be a semiotician without being a post-Kantian - Peirce himself, of course, is the best
example of a neo- or post-Kantian; one cannot elaborate a theory of communicability
or of signitive relevance without being concerned with the subjective conditions of
 Peirce and Hjelmslev 219

the production of meaningful language use. The diachronic logic of the succession of
the three paradigms can be translated synchronically in the Peircian triad, indeed:
object, sign (or representamen), and interpretant. This triad takes up the triangle I
was speaking about: the world or reality as the whole of objects, states of affairs,
events and even more sophisticated entities such as values and possibilities, the
subject directed toward reality, and the sign system having its intermediating
function.
Of course, these considerations concern Semiotics-with-capital. The place of
Semiotics as a paradigm in the history of ideas has been idealistically sketched, and a
look at the realized and constituted semiotics should suffice to get convinced that
there is no unity at all, that there is not even a set of common methodological
strategies. There are two aspects to this dysphoric statement: the apparent
substitutability of semiotics by other 'real' disciplines, on the one hand, and the
vagueness of its bounderies, on the other. Can't semiotics be substituted for by the
theory of communication (and, for instance, by its powerful variant: information
theory, artificial intelligence theory, and so on), communication being the ultimate
purpose of all signitive systematicity? If one is convinced that meaning processes (or
significance), rather than communication, is what should be studied by semiotics,
can't semiotics be substituted for by semantics? Or is semiotics a generic notion,
substitutable by a combination of disciplines, as it is for instance in Morris'frame-
work where semiotics is identified with syntax-semantics-pragmatics combined. It
may look as if semiotics is a provisional halting-place, and that the place it occupies
now will be taken by other disciplines once the social sciences become mature. In
fact, semiotics strikes sceptics as having not a precise object nor a method of its own,
thus as not being a discipline but rather a vaguely delimitated field o f studies, a
repertoire of interests that is not at all unified: it goes from zoosemiotics, codes of
taste, medical semiotics, kinesics and proxemics, musical codes, to formalized
languages, natural languages, face-to-face communication, plot structures, text
theories, mass communication, and even to culture as a whole, as a kind of upper
threshold, as the enormous set of all things that can be seen as deviant with regard to
the brute naturally given. It may seem paradoxical, then, that semiotics has been
proclaimed the queen of all social sciences; in Morris, for instance, semiotics is
glorified to be the unified science par excellence. But this idealized semiotics is
rather the Semiotics-with-capital which necessarily contrasts sharply with semiotics
as a field of realized studies. I would say that the tension between Semiotics-with-
capital and semiotics-without-capital covers in fact the relation between norm and
actualization. One can deduce a scientific model from Semiotics as a paradigm, and
isolate all phenomena which do not fit in it. Semiotics-with-capital functions as a
norm structuring the whole domain: in order to be called a semiotics, a social
science should investigate the world and men's place in it by re-evaluating the opacity
220 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

of all intermediary processes of meaning production through sign systems.

However, this permanent tension between the paradigm or the norm, on the one
hand, and the actual realization, on the other, will not be my topic for this article. I
consider this discussion rather as the background against which another opposition
should be sketched and understood. Looking at the "semiotic landscape" - the
panorama of constituted semiotics - two traditions seem to have developed
separately and without interpenetration. Anglo-saxon semioticians consider the
Peircean framework to provide the adequate conceptual apparatus for their empirical
research, whereas so-called Continental semioticians refer to the sign theory in
Saussure and in its interpretation by Hjelmslev (for instance, the Ecole s~miotique
of Paris: A.J. Greimas and followers 1). Both orientations apparently ignore each
other and manifest reciprocal distrust. It may prove to be of importance and interest
to go back to the central intuitions of Peirce, on the one hand, and of Saussure/
Hjelmslev, on the other, in order to weigh possible solidarities and contrasts against
one another. Evaluating each other's projects, methods and results could, thus, lead
to a more balanced view. The purpose of my paper is to get the best out of the
adequate insights from both sides, and to make some suggestions how the semioticians
from the Peircian or Saussuro-Hjelmslevian school can be removed from their
isolationist positions. My effort of comparing and homologating (partially) the two
semiotics, as I call them will be carried out from three angles: first, the context of
origin of both semiotics, then the typology of sign relations in Peirce and in Saussure/
Hjelmslev, and finally the impact ofpragmaticism (or of the pragmatic metatheory)
on both semiotic orientations.

CONTEXTS OF ORIGIN

1 can sketch only briefly the peculiar and distinct origins of Peircian semiotics
and Saussurian 'semiology' ("s6miologie", as he calls it). Evidently, the consistency
of both viewpoints is largely due to the intellectual contexts from which Peirce
and Saussure have elaborated their sciences of the sign. First, a few words on
Saussure's semiology. Its context of origin is that of associationistic psychology.
The definition of a sign, in the Cours de linguistique gkn~rale, is: "A sign does not
unite a thing and a name, but a concept and an acoustic image", and "the sign is a
psychic emtity" (Saussure 1966: 66, 15). Superposed onto this basic psychologism -
and in a contradictory way (Saussure is even not conscious of this contradiction)
- there is a strong influence of Durkheimian sociology: "Language is a social fact,"
and "the (psychic) associations have to be approved of ("ratifi6") b y collective
agreement" (Saussure 1966: 16). All Saussurian dichotomies, especially langue/
parole, have their origin in this discomfort caused by the superposition of
psychologism and sociologism. Nothing similar can be found in Peirce where
 Peirce and Hjelmslev 2~.1

anti-psychologism has been constant, and where semiotics is neither a psychology

nor a sociology but a logic. Signs can have a psychic origin but this cause or origin
does not affect the logical nature of the sign-function. This is why, according to
Peirce, semiotics cannot be introspective. Its method is rather experimental
because the sign is essentially what the sign does, or the sign is an action rule. The
logical constraint protects Peirce's semiotics from psychologism and sociologism,
even if Peirce's followers tried to convert the theory into a sociologistically oriented
theory of communication and of information. Peirce proclaims "semiotics (to
be) the quasi necessary and formal doctrine of signs" (Peirce 1931: 227), whereas
Saussure considers "semiology as a part of social psychology and, therefore, of
general psychology" (Saussure 1966:15-6).
It is interesting to note that Continental semiotics (the Paris school, for instance)
reacts vigorously against Saussure's reduction of semiotics to socio-psychology;
indeed, Hjelmslev himself interpreted, or better completed, Saussure in a formalistic
way, and in this sense Continental semiotics is rather Hjelmslevian than it is Saus-
surian 2. There are, in Saussure, slogans like "Language is a form" ("La langue est
une forme") as well, but this option is rather paradoxical with regard to his reduction
of semiotics to socio-psychology. Turning to the Peircean framework, again one
discovers a deflection of post-Peircean semiotics from the original logicistic
conception of semiotics in Peirce. There as well, sociologism (which was very
explicitly banished by Peirce) threatens to affect the essentially logical nature of
semiotics. It suffices to look at some variants of so-called semiotics of culture, to be
convinced .of the anti-formal and impressionistic style of thinking which was so far
from Peirce's logico-systemic attitude. This may show the cyclical nature of scientific
development: Continental semiotics deviates from its origin, Saussurian socio-
psychologism, becoming more and more formalistic, whereas Anglo-saxon semiotics
deviates from its origin, Peircian formalism (or the idea of semiotics as a logic),
becoming more and more sociological. For instance, the Greimas-type of semiotics
is essentially interested in "semiotic depth" (deep structures which are reconstructed
and never manifested) and in highly abstract semiotic relations, such as the relations
of the so-called "semiotic square," where actorial relations as well as modalities find
their place. 3 The theoretical legacy, which makes this development possible, is
Hjelmslev's truly formalistic conception of language, grammar and linguistics.
Peircean formalism, on the other hand, his logic of action, his logical view of the
interpreter as a semiotic (and not a psychosocial) entity, have been quasi-betrayed by
many of his so-called followers who do not aim at systematicity but at taxonomies; it
looks as if apriori categories are not accepted anymore and deduction is no longer
admissible because of the reputation of so-called empirical criteria of adequacy of a
science, but all of this seems so far removed from Peirce's original options and
convictions.
222 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

TRIADISM AND DYADISM OF THE SIGN-RELATION

A genuine difference, however, between both semiotics is that, in Peirce, the sign
is a triadic relation, whereas in Saussure/Hjelmslev a dyadic one. The trichotomy
versus dichotomy approach generates all sorts of theoretical peculiarities and is,
therefore, responsible for unbridgeable positions. Peirce evidently has a trichotomi-
zing methodology - he distinguishes, on the ontological axis, Firstness, Secondness,
and Thirdness 4 ; on the epistemological axis, deduction, induction, and abduction; on
the semiotic axis, representamen, object, and interpretant. Inferences made, respec-
tively, from the representamen, the object and the interpretant (terms on the
semiotic axis) toward the categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are made
by respective abduction, induction, and deduction. Abduction - a strategy of
knowledge of which Peirce and only he developed a model - is of the order of
sentiment: by abduction one infers a case from the conjunction of a rule and a
result, and these cases are qualities. Induction, of course, is of the order o f observa-
tional experience: one infers a rule from the conjunction of a case or cases and
particular results; this strategy of knowledge corresponds to Secondness, a rule being
an existential judgment. Deduction is of the order of thought: one infers a result
from the application of a general rule to a particular case: this corresponds to
Thirdness, on the ontological axis, because a result is a codification or an interpreta-
tion. Peirce's trichotomies clearly lead to a more dynamic view on semiosis and,
especially, toward a semiotics as a logic of the action of the sign.
The Saussuro-Hjelmslevian orientation is characterized by a dichotomizing
methodology: the sign expresses the relation between the signifier and the signified,
and this dichotomy (such as the one between expression and content, or between
form and substance) should be regarded as a strong methodological weapon by which
domains of investigation are stabilized, and residual aspects of the phenomenon are
isolated. Saussure's dyadism is in fact linked to the basic psychologistic orientation
of his semiotics. The opening section of the Cours shows that the arbitrarity of the
sign is an axiomatic option of structural semiotics. Linearity makes language
temporal because, as Saussure writes, "the linguistic sign does not exist but by the
association of the signifier with the signified", or because "the sign is a psychic
entity with two sides" (Saussure 1966: 65-7): linearity, and hence temporality, is a
necessary condition because the two "orders" - that of expression and that of
content, in other words, of the signifier and the signified - have to be psychologically
associated. These semiotic levels of expression and content are stabilized and simply
associated a posteriori by a psychological process, and this is why time is needed.
Peirce, on the contrary, writes explicitly that semiosis itself is an infinite process.
This process ad infinitum is not temporally linear: it is spatial rather than temporal,
because the generated entities are not associated with each other - and only associa-
 Pelrce and H~elmslev 22~

tion presupposes time - they are linked together as a network of logical relationships,
not psychological ones (Peirce 1931:303). The result of my discussion now should
not only be that the characterization of relations as being either dyadic or triadic
has widespread consequences for the theory o f the nature of the sign and of meaning
production and for its empirical applicability, but also that there is an essential link
between dyadism and psychologism, on the one hand, and triadism and the idea of a
semiotics as a logic, on the other.
Hjelmslev reacted strongly against Saussure's socio-psychologism in favor of an
"immanent logistics" of language, as he calls it in the final chapters o f the Prolegomena
(1963). But he did not go far enough, because he was not willing to accept triadism
as the essential sign relation. Hjelmslev's reformulation of the status of semiotics is
extremely intelligent (1963:107). If semiotics is a part of social psychology, as
Saussure told us, this means that semiotics has its limits. Semiotics does not but
partially realize psychology, i.e., there are objects which are naturally non-semiotic.
If, on the contrary, semiotics is a logistics (Hjelmslev's term), it does not have any
limit: there are no non-semiotic objects, and all sciences and any adequate
thought are semiotic. As a result, the question will be: "Where do the boundaries
lie between semiotic and non-semiotic if these boundaries exist?" (1963:109). Those
who proclaim themselves to be hjelmslevians - and Continental semioticians claim
they are - are very much taken by this totalitarian enthusiasm. There are no objects
transcending semiosis, and even semiotics itself is a semiotic object - there is no
meta-semiotics, and semioticians are investigating their own semiotical activity as
well, as a priviliged domain manifesting meaning production or s e m i o s i s . . . Thus,
Hjelmslev goes very much in the direction of Peirce's genuine idea of semiotics as a
logic, but still there remains an essential difference. Peirce's logic is tri-dimensional,
because the sign is triadic and dynamic: it is a logic of the action of the sign.
Hjelmslev's "logistics" remains bi-dimensional, because the sign is dyadic and static:
it is the logic of the parallel of expression and content. If one takes a closer look at
the Prolegomena, one notices that Hjelmslev's typology of semiotics (the taxonomy
of types o f semiotics) is developed through his famous stratification of language
(i.e., the taxonomy of four levels combining the dichotomies of expression and
content, and of form and substance). There are monoplane and biplane semiotics,
intersystemic and intrasystemic semiotics . . . However, all cases have stabilized
relations, there is never a process ad infinitum as it is in Peirce, simply because of the
fact that dyadic relations do not have an intermediating term. The dynamism of
the sign-relation in Peirce is in fact due to the functioning o f the third term, the
interpretant, which is simultaneously a sign itself and an essential ingredient of any
sign-relation. This brings me to my third point - the most important one - the
pragmatic impact on semiotics, which appears to be a truly distinctive criterion of
identification o f what Peirce, on the one hand, and Hjelmslev, on the other, thought
224 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

to be the essence of semiosis and the nature o f semiotics.

THE PRAGMATIC MARK

The Peircean interpretant is not the personalized subjectivity "understanding"

the significance-in-the-world, as it is in hermeneutics. It is not a personal actor, an
actual agent who "exists" autonomously as an ontological entity: it is a sign itself.
But, on the other hand, the interpretant is an essential ingredient of any sign-rela-
tion: it makes the sign into an action. There is something mysterious about Peirce's
important notion of the interpretant: how is it logically possible that the interpretant
is a sign itself and, at the same time, an essential ingredient of all signs? This mystery
disappears, however, once one sets aside idealistic and subjectivistic preconceptions.
The status and the function of the interpretant can only be understood by
analyzing the concept of a triadic relation. In a triadic relation, the terms of the
relation articulate each other; they do not represent each other. I am using here the
fruitful opposition of articulation versus representation. Peirce has never been very
clear and unambiguous with regard to the notion of representation (sometimes he
writes something like "to be a sign, a 'thing' should 'represent' an object"). But we
all know that Peirce's writings are not exempt from obscurity and contradictions,
and in other, more sophisticated, paragraphs he states that the relation o f a represen-
tamen to an object is not semiotic unless this relation isconceived (the interpretant as
a quality), is said/uttered (the interpretant as existence) and is inferred (the inter-
pretant as an idea, as a thought). This is why the interpretant can be at the same time
a sign, and provoke the sign-function, and even be the effect of the sign-relation. This
mysterious potential of the interpretant makes of Peirce's semiotics a dynamic logic
and a theory o f meaning as a process ad infinitum. To conceive/to say-utter/to infer
makes of the sign-function a process of meaning production without an identifiable
subject. Peirce never characterizes the interpretant as a person, or a personalized
subject: the interpretant is a habit, and the creativity is nothing but the creativity to
be found in the habit, in fact the habit of creativity. Articulation is internal to
semiosis (there is, indeed, nothing outside of semiosis, just like Hjelmslev himself
wished). Articulation is the action of the sign or the conceiving/uttering/inferring of
the interpretant. The interpretant, however, is not the "emotional" nor the "energe-
tic" interpretant this again is Peirce's terminology - but the "final" or the logical
one.
The problem with the Saussurean and Hjelmslevian orientations is that they open
no perspective on the dynamism and the creativity of the sign and the meaning
process nor on the interpretation regularities and on rules of inference. The semiotic
tradition following Saussure/Hjelmslev should add the idea of "signitive life" (the
sign as action) and the centrality of interpretation and inference to their axiomatics
as an illuminating supplement or amendment to genuine structuralism. This perspec-
 Peirce and Hjelmslev 225

tive is not globally or totally absent in the Cours and in Hjelmslev's writings. There
are inchoate precedents of a logic o f articulation that should be a semiotics, for
instance in Saussure - 1 think of his rather suggestive theory of the sign as artieulus
(opposed to a definition of the sign as a term o f the system, a unit of syntagmatics
and an entity), and here and there a notion of language as discourse emerges (Parret
1971:233ss.). But nothing far-reaching has been worked out in the Cours 6.
Let me say that the pragmatic mark of Peircean semiotics is foundational, and
this is far from true for Saussuro-Hjelmslevian semiotics. 'Pragmatic' here can create
some confusion: Pragmatism (or Pragmaticism) and Pragmatics share the same stem
but have a very different scope. Pragrnatics, in my view, is the theory which
connects meaning with uses of language in all kinds of context; thus, contextuality is
a condition sine qua non to pragmatics. Pragmatism is something more, it has a
broader and more universal scope. Peirce was led by Kant's use of the term
"pragmatisch" in the Critique o f Pure Reason to use pragmatism to mean "in relation
to some definite human purpose" (Kasher 1981:58-9). Pragmatism has a global
anthropological motivation, being in fact a theory of human reasoning (reasoning is
motivated by fundamental anthropological purposes). When I say that the pragmatic
mark of Peircean semiotics is foundational, I take "pragmatic" in the broad sense of
pragmatism. What is original to Peirce's semiotics and absent in Hjelmslev is a
relevant category or rationality, essentially linked to the triplet, discussed above, of
conceiving/uttering-saying/inferring.
As a conclusion, I would like to say a few words about the perspective Peirce
opened when he defined semiotics as the logic of htrman reasoning. Language and
other signitive activities are chains.of reasons and, thus, based on processes of
reasoning. Discourse, for the pragmatically oriented semiotician, is a totality of
regularities expressing theoretical and practical reasoning. Not all inferences made
here are logical ones (in the strict and technical sense of the word). Inferential
activity is, in fact, a procedure of transposition of meaning from one object-level 1o
another paraphrastic level of discourse. One never transcends semiosis, i.e., there is
no meta-discourse or meta-language in which all meaning can be finally translated.
Inference as a semiotic procedure, in the overall semiosis, can still be realized in two
ways: descriptively and prescriptively. Semiotic rationality develops by preference
chains of prescriptive inferences: "If you accept s, then you accept S" or even
" I f you accept s, then you should accept S." The property of acceptability of an
inference rests upon evMence. Inferential activity of reasoning is to use and to
recognize reasons. But the reasons here are not "natural"-descriptive ("the reason
why A generates B") but "non-natural"-prescriptive reasons ("A is the reason/br x
that B"). The reasons for those who reason semiotically, thus realizing inferences,
are "non-natural"-prescriptive reasons. It is impossible to elaborate on the techniques
of inferring prescriptively here. However, let it be mentioned that the evidence
226 Language Sciences, Volume 6, Number 2 (1984)

commanding every possible inference, once the inference is made by "non-natural"

reasoning, rests upon the Peircean triadic scheme: the structure of a reasoning/
reasonable signitive representamen, such as discourse or any other sign system, the
structure of the object of reasoning, and the internal structure of the reasoner/
interpreter. It is commonly known that classical semantics and the traditional theory
of meaning handle a bipolar concept of rationality (of which the two poles are
thought and reality). Peircean semiotics, on the contrary, manipulates a triangular
model: reasoning is not determined by its relation to the real (whereby rationality
would be deduced to a faculty o f reconstructing the truth), but by the intermedia-
tion of the concept of a rational being or a reasoner. A Peircean notion of rationality
stresses the fact that one reasons - and one understands - within the generality of
purposes which are common to humanity. This again is Kant's use of the term
"pragmatisch" and my use of the qualification of Peircean semiotics as m a r k e d by
pragmatism.
I have approached the homologation of the two semiotics from three angles: the
context of origin of both semiotics, the triadism versus the dyadism of the sign-
relation, and the impact of pragmat(ic)ism on semiotics. Some differences are
dramatic, and it is not really evident that a dialogue can be fruitful. Some superficial
misunderstandings should be removed by going back directly to the writings of the
patrons of contemporary semiotics, Saussure and Hjelmslev, on the one hand, and
Peirce on the other. And it should always remain cathartic to know that Semiotics-
with-capital is a normative concept that can never be actualized. But, on the other
hand, it is a paradigm that liberates us from the metaphysical myth and from all
kinds of idealisms and subjectivisms. And this should be enough to positively
evaluate each other's efforts effectuated in the framework of either one of the two
semiotics.

NOTES

1. An exhaustive survey of the state of Parisian semiotics can be found in Greimas

and Court6s (1982).
2. This is evident from the origin of the Greimas-type of semiotics on; see Greimas
(1966).
3. See entries "Semiotic square" and "Modality" in Greimas and Court6s (1982).
4. "My view is that there are three modes of being. I hold that we can directly
observe them in elements of whatever is at any time before the mind in any way.
They are the being of positive qualitative possibility, the being of actual fact,
and the being of law that will govern facts in the f u t u r e . . . (Firstness:) We
naturally attribute Firstness to outward objects, that we suppose they have
capacities in themselves which may or may not be already actualized . . .
 Peirce and Hjelmslev 227

(Secondness:) The actuality of the event seems to lie in its relations to the
universe of existents. Actuality is something brute. We have a ( . . . ) conscious-
ness of effort and resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure
sense of actuality . . . (Thirdness:) To say that a prediction has a decided
tendency to be fulfilled, is to say that the future events are in a measure really
governed by a l a w . . . The mode of being which consists in the fact that future
facts of Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call a
Thirdness" (Peirce 1931 1.23-26).
5, See Greenlee (1973) for criticisms of this use of the notion of representation.
6. See Godel (1957, 214) for some hints of Saussure's inchoate articulatory
conception.

REFERENCES

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